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BRECKIE 

Two Years and Nine Months 



B R E C K I E 

HIS FOUR YEARS 
1914-1918 

By 

Mary Breckinridge Thompson 



NEW YORK 

PRIVATELY PUBLISHED 

I918 



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Copyright, 1918, 
By Mary Breckinridge Thompson 



Type-Set, Printed and Bound by 
J. J. Little & Ives Company, New York 



NOV 29 iSltf 

©CI.A5()8325 



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What alchemy is thine, little child, 

Transmuting all our thoughts, thou that art dead, 

And making gold of all the dross of lead 
That leaves the souVs pure crucible defiled? 

— Eugene Lee-Hamilton 



PREFACE 

In presenting this brief record of Breckie's four years to his 
friends and mine and a few others whom I revere as friends 
of childhood, I would like to call attention to the fact that much 
more of his short life was spent outdoors than in — something 
unusual I think in the annals of civilized infancy. For at least 
seven or eight months out of each year he spent about twenty 
hours of the twenty-four in the open air, and this was a tre- 
mendous factor in making his body sturdy and his nature sweet 
I reared him as carefully as I could by those scientific laws of 
child development whose discovery in recent years has revolu- 
tionized the care of little children in body and mind, and this 
partly explains his wholesomeness and the growing reasonable- 
ness of his third and fourth years. But Breckie was a creature 
of higher endowments than my own and I early recognized in our 
comradeship together that I led only in maturity, for his were the 
larger possibilities. He was not my little child only but my 
master as well, and the best friend I ever had. 

It will help those who have so tenderly shared Breckie's loss 
with us, and to them this is especially addressed, to learn that 
recently I have had good news of him through a friend who 
is, unknown to all but a most limited circle, a psychic of un- 
usual gifts. That I should have this news will be no surprise to 
those who have been following the work of the Society for 
Psychical Research and especially the astonishing progress of 
the last few years. It has been an inexpressible blessing to learn 
from old friends on the other side that Breckie is with his sister 
and impressing all who meet him over there, just as he did us, by 
the wonder of his expanding mind and the radiance reflected 
from his happy heart. In addition I know that I am often with 



vi PREFACE 

him when I sleep and that the passing months are not so much 
severing as uniting us. 

Now to all who loved Breckie, and they were many, and to 
those who love childhood who will see its pages, I dedicate this 
book. To those who have, like me, relinquished a loved child — 
whether to death or to human maturity — I especially dedicate 
it with the hope that in reading of Breckie they 

". . . may chance to hear once more 
The little feet along the floor." 

Washington, D. C. 
August 1st, 1918. 



FIRST YEAR 

Out of the Everywhere into the Here. 

— George MacDonald. 



BRECKINRIDGE THOMPSON was bom at the home of 
his grandfather and grandmother Breckinridge in Fort 
Smith, Arkansas, on the night of the twelfth of January, 1914, 
at eleven thirty-five o'clock. His advent had been so difficult that 
he was three days and nights in arriving and presented quite a 
battered appearance to those who first saw him. There was a 
big bruise on his head and over one ear and bad cuts in the 
neck in which an infection settled which kept his life in the bal- 
ance above two weeks. He was an eight pound baby, well formed 
with an exceptionally fine head — but so wrinkled that he looked 
as if he had just terminated a long and philosophic existence. 

For hours after his birth Breckinridge's hold on this ex- 
istence was of the feeblest. At first he seemed quite lifeless, and 
over an hour was spent in resuscitation by the doctor and two 
trained nurses before respiration could be established in even a 
tolerable manner, so they told me afterwards, but I was mercifully 
unconscious then. 

In one of his books. Sir Oliver Lodge, speaking of the ar- 
rival of each new life in an embodied form, notes that there are 
always loving hearts waiting to receive it and eager prepara- 
tions for its coming. Not always, Sir Oliver; I have myself at- 
tended confinements where no preparations had been made and 
no love awaited the baby's coming. But for Breckie's ad- 
vent, the first child, the first grandchild, a host of loyal hearts 
stood by, and such was his welcome that the morning stars 
seemed singing together and the sons of God shouting for joy. 

The first two weeks after his birth were really the only hard 
ones Breckie ever knew, except the one preceding his death. 
While they lasted I Hved from one nursing to the next, 
when every third hour brought the little bandaged head, so hot 
to the touch, and the pressure of hot little hands against my 

3 



4 BRECKIE 

breast. In a few days the wrinkled old-new face had given way 
to one baby-like and full, with a real hunger look thereon, 
and enormous eyes which seemed to me to harbor an expression 
like that of Rossetti's Blessed Damozel, for "the wonderment 
had hardly gone from that still look of his." Puzzled, he seemed, 
pondering, but "trailing clouds of glory," my little son. 

Fortunately I had an abundance, a superabundance of milk 
and his appetite never flagged, so that at the end of the two 
weeks of fever he had gained in weight. His "immunizing 
fluid," the doctor called it; but you willed to live, my baby, 
and caught with mighty tugs at life. 

The trained nurse who attended me was an old friend and 
classmate of mine from St. Luke's in New York, Breck's 
Aunty Biddle, and to her devoted care and the doctor's skill we 
owed Breck's life. It was two weeks after his birth before I 
could see other friends, even so dear a friend as his godmother, 
whom we called "Pansy." Nevertheless the friendship of many 
hearts there and elsewhere backed Breckie and me in our 
fight to pull through, and I wrote February third : "What would 
the world be without them ? Friendship it really is which makes 
the closeness in human relationships. We loved my mother so 
much as children because she entered into our lives as a friend 
and I trust that Breck will be my friend from his earliest con- 
scious moments." 

Before he was a month old the baby's superb appearance com- 
pensated us for all the anxiety we had gone through in his be- 
half. On February fourth I wrote my husband : "Before your 
last visit, when Breck's fever ran high, and I was especially 
anxious, I often thought of Frazier and of how his mother 
had nursed him through all his childish illnesses but to lose him 
when and as she did. But I thought too that each day of a 
child's life from the earliest ones is its own blessing, even if 
the sum total of them all were never garnered in — and I would 
have gone through what I did to have our baby for only one 
week of him at my breast, if that had been all I could keep. . . . 
But now you never saw such a lusty fellow." 

Later in the month I gave details about him : "He is adorable 




BRECKIE 
Age Six Weeks, with His Grandmother 



BRECKIE 5 

in his bath and likes it ... an exquisite baby, exquisitely clean, 
fragrant and well cared for." "He is a good baby — well trained 
that is — almost never frets at night — just wakens, nurses, and 
either goes right back to sleep or plays with his hands. He has 
never known what it is to be picked up and walked about, or 
rocked, and he doesn't expect it. His playing with his hands 
consists as yet in waving or sucking them." "He had his first real 
out-of-doors airing on the lawn in his carriage yesterday (Feb. 
2ath) between one and two in the afternoon. Alice was 
proud indeed to take him. I watched them from the upstairs 
gallery, which is still my only out-doors." 

On February twenty-eighth I wrote : "If you were here now 
you would delight in your son who has been lying for an hour 
in his cradle cooing and waving his hands, and asking attention of 
no one. . . . Here he fretted and I went to him. While I was 
with him he broke into one smile after the other, his fat little face 
creasing. I have left him smiling and waving his hands. He 
is the jolliest, merriest, heartiest, hungriest fellow of his age I 
ever saw. Alice says a gentleman came on the place yesterday 
and called him a whale. He was weighed yesterday — thirteen 
pounds and five ounces, a gain of fifteen ounces in the past 
week. That is prodigious. I keep his weight on a weight chart 
that records the normal weight line of the average infant up to 
fifty-two weeks. Our baby's weight is nearly four pounds more 
than this normal average for eight weeks." 

In my journal I wrote : "He is my life indeed, and his father 
too worships him — my longed-for baby, my despaired-of baby, my 
love-life, my great man in embryo, for whom high deeds are now 
preparing and a noble death attending a career of lofty services. 
For these an all-unworthy but humbly eager mother must pre- 
pare you, Breckinridge, by seeking to foster in you those ideals 
which are the best of us, by keeping your young body healthy 
and your will in your own control." 



On March nineteenth when Breckinridge was two months 
and one week old we left the home of his grandparents where 



6 BRECKIE 

he was born and carried him up into the Ozark mountains, to 
Crescent College at Eureka Springs where his father and I 
lived. With us went an old-fashioned negro woman, Aunt AUce,. 
his first nurse. I was glad that my boy's first months were lived 
under her kindly influence and in the spell of her traditions, for 
the old South was his inheritance and I wanted him to drink at 
that spring. In my journal of that period I find I have written: 

"I want many things for him and dream his future as once 
I dreamed my own, and all, all that I can gather in to glorify it 
will be gathered with the growing years. He must know 
the ways of all the little creeping things, of trees and birds, and 
he must have a garden plot and chickens. He shall ride and 
swim, fish and hunt. As he grows older I will open up the 
wonders of the dear tales I loved from 'Alice in Wonderland' to 
'Ivanhoe.' He shall not want Ruskin's 'Sesame,' but shall learn 
under the 'wise of old.' h>specially I want so to guide his 
growing tastes as to help him to develop himself — not to make 
him over ; and the brother and sisterhood without which he 
would miss the give and take of nursery days shall not be lacking 
if I am eciual to the bearing of them and Dick can make the 
money to feed and educate them. 'O, bonny brown sons and 
O, sweet little daughters' of my far dreams, I have realized one 
of you — and he is bonnier, better, dearer, than any I ever 
dreamed." 

The chief characteristics of his first months were his immense 
appetite and his love of wind and fresh air. With the first warm 
nights we arranged a sleeping porch for him on a balcony oflF of 
my sitting room and he and I slept out there all summer, I on a 
mattress on the floor by his crib. Nearly all of his other hours 
were spent on the lawn in his carriage, or on the ground, tum- 
bling about in grass and leaves. He grew brown as a nut and 
weighed at five months, naked, twenty pounds. 

When he fretted he could nearly always be quieted by letting 
the wind blow on his face. Once on the sixteenth of April, 
when his nurse was ill with tonsilitis and his father in Little 
Rock, I left him, while I went to supper, with my friend Celia 
Brinson, later his devoted "B." He behaved well until just 



BRECKIE 7 

before I returned, when he suddenly seemed to believe himself 
deserted by his own people. He looked at "B", saw that the 
face was not one familiar to him, and burst into the most deso- 
late of sobbings and tears. Even after I had taken him he still 
sobbed a little until I carried him out on to his little balcony, 
hung in mid-air, with the lights of the valley below and the 
stars of the sky above, and there, where the wind blew full on 
his face, he soon fell quietly asleep. 

I find the following brief records of certain phases of his 
development : 

On April twenty-second, aged three months and ten days, he 
first demanded his food from Alice's arms at fully a yard's dis- 
tance. From so great a distance he had not noticed me before. 

On April twenty-fourth he first took hold of and shook loudly 
his dog-faced rattle. 

On May tenth, a warm Sunday afternoon, we put on his first 
short clothes. He lacked two days of being four months old 
but weighed eighteen pounds and ten ounces and looked so 
huge that the short clothes became him better than the long. 

On May twenty-third he first succeeded, after repeated efforts, 
in sucking his toe. 

In his second month he was smiling, but unfortunately I did 
not record the exact dates of the first smile and laugh. He 
fairly beamed with smiles every morning upon Alice when she 
came into my room to lift him from his crib. She told me that 
out of doors when groups of students or strangers approached his 
carriage he would turn a really appealing look at her, "as if. Miss 
Mary, as if he was sayin' 'Alice save me.' " Again and again 
she shook her white head and said to me: "Miss Mary, he's de 
smartest child to his age I ever see." 

He was the lustiest I had ever seen, accustomed chiefly to 
the sickly specimens of my hospital days and the far from per- 
fect type of our average civilization. 

Dear old Alice had to leave me, when summer came, for 
her daughter's confinement. She sent me her niece Adella to 
take her place until her return — but in the autumn she was ill 
and the next spring she died. I kept the niece until I could go 



8 BRECKIE 

back to Fort Smith again, when Alice secured for me one of her 
friends — the "Mammy" of my baby's second and part of his 
third year. With Adella, because of her comparative inex- 
perience, I rarely left the boy alone for even a couple of hours — 
although she seemed reliable and willing. I find this note in my 
journal : 

"I nurse him, boil his water, watch his dress, sponge for 
the heat, sleep on the balcony by him at night, keep him 
four mornings a week entire while Adella washes and irons 
his clothes — but also I try to rest, exercise when it is not too hot, 
to carry him as little as possible, and so order my own life as to 
keep healthy and rested for him ; and to this end I am not with 
him always." 

It was nearly a year after his birth before I had really re- 
gained my strength, but I nursed him entirely for nine months. 
Anticipating a little I will add that in his tenth month he re- 
ceived one bottle of suitable formula from Holt, at ten months 
two bottles, in the eleventh month three, and at one year ex- 
actly he gave up his last breast feeding and was completely 
weaned, having by that time begun also to munch on pieces of 
unsweetened zwieback and to eat every day a coddled egg and 
strained cereals. When he was eight months old I gave him 
orange juice once a day between feedings. Because there were 
no certified dairies in our locality I pasteurized his milk every 
day from the time of his first bottle feeding until his last 
illness. 

His first tooth broke through the skin on the nineteenth of 
July when he was six months and one week old, and dentition 
proceeded satisfactorily thereafter. 

On July seventeenth, on my large, old-fashioned tester bed, 
he did his first real creeping and succeeded in reaching and grab- 
bing the object of his pursuit. Until then such progress as he 
had made was achieved mainly by rolling from side to side. 

3 

We spent the summer at Crescent, used in the season as a 
large hotel under a manager's care, and hard it was to suf- 




BRECKIE 
Age Five Months, with His Mother and Tidy 



BRECKIE 9 

fer the intrusions of strangers everywhere out of doors on our 
family life. My mother and sister stopped with us on their 
way to Norway, where they were touring with my brother Car- 
son when the great war thundered in upon a horrified world. 
I sat out of doors with my baby and read and thought of it 
until my mind reeled, and often I said: "Oh, little boy, what 
does the future hold for you and me — for would not the sword 
pierce through my own soul also ?" It was to pierce indeed, but 
not for him the wars of this world — only for me, for me. 

My mother and sister stopped with us again on their way 
back to Fort Smith after they had returned from Europe. At 
that time the thing Breck most wanted to do was to throw a 
rock (the name by which we designate stones in Arkansas from 
pebbles to boulders), but he could not, in his eighth month, com- 
pass the act. 

My little fox terrier Tidy fairly gloated over having rocks 
thrown for her to pick up and bring back. She seldom saw one 
of us sitting on the ground without bringing a rock, laying it 
down beside us, and then standing by with the fanatical light 
of a single-minded enthusiast in her eyes and an ingratiating wag 
of her stub tail. As we threw the rocks Breck watched us with 
intense earnestness, then he would pick up a rock himself, grasp 
it tight, and throw with his arm — but he never let go the rock, 
kept it clasped tight in his moist little hand, and thereupon 
appeared utterly puzzled as to why it didn't spin off into space 
like ours. He wanted desperately to throw it and tried his 
hardest, but could not let it go. 

On August twenty-third he spoke his first word, with knowl- 
edge of its meaning. The day before his grandmother had spent 
much time in showing him his celluloid duck and saying: "Duck, 
duck." On the twenty-third, upon his being shown the duck 
again, he at once called out : " 'Uck, 'uck." In his eighth month 
he also began calling his father "daddy" and "dadda" and he 
knew Tidy by name but could not call her. Whenever he heard 
her called he tried to bark like her. He also waved "bye-bye" 
and shook his head solemnly sidewise at us when we said : 
"no, no." 



lo BRECKIE 

But his most characteristic and growing trait, even at eight 
months, was his ready humor for all situations, even a bump 
on the head — and when he laughed his whole face creased, his 
mouth expanded broadly, and his eyes actually snapped with 
joy. One day he was sitting on the lawn in his wooden pen when 
Tidy came up on the outside and began digging a hole with her 
forefeet. Breck watched her solemnly for a moment and then 
began to laugh and laughed so hard he had to hold to the sides of 
his pen for support. 

We often took him driving during that summer, usually to a 
small body of water hid against the side of a mountain and sur- 
rounded by tall pines, called the Sanitarium Lake. There we had 
picnic suppers and I always carried along his rubber folding 
bath tub for him to lie in, well out of reach of chiggers and ticks. 
Afterwards we drove back in the cool of night under the stars 
or moon with him sleeping in my arms. In the warmest 
weather he wore only a gauze band and diaper, the Arnold 
knit style of diaper. He had socks and linen bootees as well 
as thin cotton shirts and nainsook dresses for cooler days with 
long silk stockings and light wraps for the coolest. Sometimes 
he and his father and I drove alone, just with Tidy, but often a 
dear cousin, Katherine, and a dear friend, Eleanor, spending the 
summer at Crescent, were with us, and once or twice another 
friend who bore Breck's name. 

Breckinridge early began climbing about and at eight months 
fell out of his carriage, the carriage falling on him, bruising and 
cutting his left cheek. He had awakened and climbed down to 
the foot of his carriage and out before Adella, sitting by, was 
aware of his being awake. Soon after this I bought a strap 
for him that fastened around his waist and then to the sides of the 
carriage, allowing him to stand up in it without its being possible 
for him to fall out. From that time on he usually rode in his 
carriage standing upright until early in his second year, when he 
discarded it altogether. 

I find the following notes on my daily life written in October 
when Breck was nine months old, and just before I began the 
gradual weaning of him : "My family have all gone aad I have 




u 



< 



BRECKIE II 

settled into a fairly useful routine which centers chiefly around 
my boy. His schedule is planned first and I tuck in the odds 
and ends of the rest of my life about that. When I go out to 
him after my breakfast, while Adella takes hers, I generally 
carry with me a book. Lately it has been one of the English re- 
views, yesterday and for some days before the Nineteenth 
Century. Its every war note is an inspiration in the September 
issue. Babekins is taking his first daily nap as I read. Sud- 
denly he wakes, sits bolt upright in his carriage and laughs at 
me, his sunburnt little face peering over the side. Then we 
go in and he has his strained orange juice, his bath, and then 
his nine thirty nursing. He is such an early bird that he has 
risen and nursed before six and gone outdoors at six thirty. 
Next on four mornings a week, while Adella washes and irons 
his clothes in the laundry, he and I go out in the grounds again 
with my old brown traveling rug, many times washed, where 
he plays with acorns and sticks and stones and mother watches 
lest some find their way into his mouth. In between watchings 
and calls of Here, here, Tidy, which he now says quite well 
himself, I read over something for my lectures on hygiene or 
I sew. When he has his second nap I give more attention to the 
study or the sewing. In the afternoons Adella has him after his 
one thirty nursing and I take a nap and then get out for a walk. 
Five thirty is baby's nursing time again, and after that to bed on 
his balcony, where he is now sleeping — my own lamb." 

One morning I woke to find it raining and, running out to 
Breck's balcony, discovered him sitting up in his crib with the 
rain falling gently on him, while he tried to catch its drops in his 
hands. 

One afternoon this same autumn, when his father and I with 
him and Tidy were all driving together he seized the reins and 
shook them, making sounds to the horses. Whereupon Tidy 
began to bark and seized them too, so that it looked for awhile 
as if the dog and the baby were to do all the driving, Dick 
straightened out the tangle, saying meanwhile to his son : "Boy, 
there isn't anything about you I would change if I could." 



12 BRECKIE 



4 



On the third of December we lost our little dog Tidy, poisoned 
by strychnine, and I wrote the following brief tribute to the 
memory of one of my baby's earliest friends: 

"In connection with the death of our little fox terrier, 'Tidy,* 
I want to write a few words — but they are not intended for those 
who already know and love dogs (and the man who knows dogs 
and does not love them is too bad to be reached by words), but 
rather for those who have grown up and are living in ignorance 
of dogs. I should like to open some hearts towards these loyal, 
kindly creatures by telling briefly a few things about Tidy. 

"This little animal was a member of our household, welcomed 
and fondly greeted by every teacher and student, to many of 
whom she paid frequent visits of social affability. In addition 
she was a member, on intimate terms, of our family circle and 
showed in a thousand endearing ways her affection for us. 
During the long months before my baby came, she seldom left 
my side, taking all my walks with me, and curbing her own de- 
sires (when I could not walk) to curl her active little body down 
near mine. Other friends had often to go about their several 
ways, but Tidy's ways were always mine. There was never 
an hour's slackening of her constant devotion. 

"After our baby had come, she extended her affection for her 
family to include her family's baby, not a touch of jealousy or 
envy marring its single-minded purity. When the baby grew old 
enough to creep on the floor. Tidy was always his playfellow, 
tumbling about with him, but so gently, and suffering excruciat- 
ing liberties to be taken with her eyes and ears. Her only 
retort would be to kiss over and over his barbarous little hands. 
His fondness for Tidy was the strongest moral force we could 
bring to bear in rearing him, for he tried to imitate her and 
learned nothing but good in doing so. Observing that Tidy was 
obedient and desisted from whatever she did when one of us 
said 'no,' the baby would also desist. Even when traveling on 
all fours towards the coveted coal scuttle, he would stop promptly 



BRECKIE 13 

when we spoke (as he had seen Tidy do), shake his head solemnly 
'no, no' — and wave bye-bye to the coal scuttle. He likes to be 
called Tidy. We had hoped, as Tidy was young, for her help 
in training him for years to come. But the ready little paws 
have stiffened and the friendly eyes have closed in a sudden and 
violent death. 

"The noblest minds of all ages have loved dogs, and the pages 
of those who wrote (Scott, Dickens, George Eliot, Mrs. Ewing 
— innumerable others and among the moderns Maeterlinck, Bar- 
rie and many more) are written large with the praises of them. 
But no love that we could bear him has ever equaled the love 
of the dog for us. From drowning, from death in banking snow- 
drifts, from desolation, from distress, in all the ways that he 
could compass the dog has aided man, has followed him living 
and guarded his corpse when dead — yes, and died of grief for 
him afterwards. The dog was never unfaithful to a love or trust. 
Such devotion as is his, such unconscious heroism, such fidelity, 
such gentleness to the weak and ferocity to the wicked, such 
utter forgetfulness of self, are elsewhere so rare that when we 
find them united in a man we call him godlike. 

"And in return for the noblest attributes of the spirit, what 
material claims does the dog ask of life? Only 'the crumbs that 
fall from the master's table.' When we had folded up the blanket 
she slept on, put away her collar and brush, and emptied her 
bowl of drinking water, we had disposed of Tidy's worldly pos- 
sessions. 

"But we believe in the spirit of the ancients that she has 
gone to Sirius, the dog-star, 'the bright and happy star that gives 
good dwelling.' " 



On December sixth, when he lacked a month and four days 
of being one year tfld, Breckinridge took his first two or 
three steps in the rotunda of Crescent College. On several pre- 
vious occasions he had stood alone, but quite suddenly he de- 
cided on this particular day to cut loose from all his moorings 



14 BRECKIE 

and put out to sea by himself. It was some weeks later before he 
walked habitually in preference to creeping. 

Before the Christmas holidays had begun Breckinridge and I 
went down to Fort Smith for a visit, and great was the amuse- 
ment of every one over the luggage with which we traveled. 
Besides the trunks (one of which held the indispensable pas- 
teurizer), and baby carriage, which were checked, there was my 
handbag, Breck's lightweight suit case, a Walker-Gordon zinc 
lined traveling milk container filled with Breck's tubes of milk, 
boiled water and orange juice, all packed in ice, his folding 
bath tub and his clothes rack. My mother brought her house 
man, Alice's son Walter, to meet the train and assume the bulk 
of our supplies. 

We stayed in Fort Smith until after Breck's first birthday and 
saw again several times his dear nurse Aunt Alice, who marveled 
over his growth and bonny face. I had to carry him to her cot- 
tage, for she was dying and could not come to us. We got news 
of her every day through her son. She told me that since she 
could not come back to me again she was sending me her friend 
"Mammy Jennie" to be Breck's nurse and take her place with 
him. Mammy was a dark negress, delightfully old-fashioned and 
simple-hearted and, barring rheumatism in her feet, a perfect 
nurse for a little baby. She was willing, experienced, and faith- 
ful in overwhelming measure. Breck and I both became devoted 
to her. She had a way, if I kept him longer in the family circle 
than she approved, of coming after him, saying as she came : 
"Dis chile's tired of white folks. Come back to Mammy." 
Months later, when he could talk fairly well, he used to echo this 
complaint: "Mammy, baby's tired of white folks." She never 
got over his size and splendid appearance, saying often: "Miss 
Mary, dis is de biggest baby I ever see." 

My mother's dressing room was Breckie's nursery in Fort 
Smith, but he slept out on the sleeping porch by day and, by 
night, next my bed, in a little old crib whidi had been mine, while 
Mammy occupied an adjoining room. The doctor who had 
brought him into the world and who was immensely proud of him 
vaccinated him while we were there. It "took" well, changing 



BRECKIE 15 

him for a few days from the cheerful, good-natured child he was" 
habitually into a feverish, fretful one. 

But he recovered soon and learned to dance. That is he 
danced up and down with quite evident delight whenever his 
grandmother or aunt hummed "Sho-fly" or "Turkey in de straw." 



SECOND YEAR 

He has seen the starry hours 
And the springing of the flowers; 
And the fairy things that pass 
In the forests of the grass. 

— Stevenson. 



/^N January twelfth we celebrated Breckie's first birthday in 
^^ the house where he was bom. Instead of having a cake, 
which he couldn't even have tasted, we stuck one candle on an 
orange of which later he had the juice. We also ransacked the 
attic for such of the old toys, some of them over thirty years 
old, as might charm him. A little red bucket which had been 
given my brother Clifton nearly twenty years before in Finland 
was brought out and presented to Breck on this occasion. It 
stands now on the mantel in my bedroom where some one placed 
it when it was last carried in by his eager little hands. 

I did not take Mammy back with me from Fort Smith but she 
followed me about a month later. I then resumed the long af- 
ternoon tramps in the woods which I loved and without which 
my health suffered, quite safe about the baby when I left him with 
this devoted woman. 

There was a young married woman in the faculty at Crescent 
this winter who fairly radiated a loving comprehension of lit- 
tle children. She delighted in watching Breck playing about, 
intervening between him and his chosen tasks only when neces- 
sary to keep him from harm. She enjoyed especially his per- 
petual imitations at this period of sounds. When the elevator 
stopped with a groan he mimicked it and if a piece of furniture 
squeaked he at once squeaked as nearly as he could. He crowed 
when he saw birds and chickens. One day, upon first observing 
a print my mother had brought me, a copy of that Norwegian 
painting of the Resurrection which hangs above the altar in the 
village church of Molde, he seemed struck by the wings of the 
angel, looked at me and crowed. 

During this winter of 191 5 my cousin Frances came on a 
visit to us and wrote about Breck as follows to her mother 
in Kentucky: "Mary is so happy in her mammoth child. He 

19 



20 BRECKIE 

is a regular mastodon — one year of age and two year old clothes 
too small for him. He is good as gold, wonderfully well and 
healthy and beautifully cared for. Mary is mad over him, also 
his father and others seem somewhat idolatrous. He is not cling- 
ing or appealing like other children, but gorgeous and inde- 
pendent ; never lays his head on any one's shoulder, has no caress- 
ing ways, but is cheerful and pleasant and grows on one's af- 
fections. I am getting a bit foolish on the subject. He is a yery 
impersonal child and joyous." 

Nearly three years later this cousin, who never saw him again, 
wrote me : "I shall never think of him without an impression 
of Bigness and Brightness." 

Soon after this old Alice died. February twenty-fourth I wrote 
in my journal : "I have left what Frances calls my 'mastodon' out 
on the East Terrace, where I was keeping him while Mammy ate 
her dinner, — he playing with the gravel on the paths and I 
watching the buds on the maple and the green leaves of the 
early tulips. And as I watched my eyes were brimming with 
tears for the two quaint figures that shared that terrace with me 
last spring while baby, a wee baby, slept in his carriage. Of those 
two figures, one a dog and one an elderly negress, the one is 
now dead, the other dying, — and I had thought a second spring 
would find us grouped as before. But that kind old face of Aunt 
Alice's, her head bound in red flannel, will never bend again in 
loving care above my child — and the dear little, bounding, pul- 
sating body of dog Tidy will not spring forward now at 
my call. How peopled the world is with those that were !" 

On March second when Breckie was nearly fourteen months 
old I wrote : "Baby weighs twenty-five pounds and twelve ounces, 
and has just cut his tenth tooth, his second jaw tooth. He has 
recently evinced constructive tendencies, which please me, piling 
up his blocks instead of only striking them down after Mammy 
has piled them. He can pile up as many as four. He also 
tries to put on his own cap and sometimes succeeds. When he 
gets in my bed in the morning he pulls my handkerchief from 
under my pillow and goes through the motions of blowing his 
nose with it. He kisses himself in the mirror. His favorite toy 



BRECKIE 21 

just now seems to be a wooden duck Caroline Gardner gave 
him, which he calls *Guck,' but he loves sticks and leaves and 
stones and his blocks. He points to the radiator and what he 
calls the 'pire' and says 'hot.' He is passionately fond of the 
buttons on clothes, calling them 'baaton.' He is delectable, en- 
trancing, trotting about on his sturdy legs, his pleasant red- 
cheeked face usually radiant with sunshine and good nature." 

He was fond of turning up all the handles to the drawers 
in his father's Adam desk and of hanging my typewriter brush 
to a screw. Frequently when I couldn't find it in the drawer 
of my typewriter table I located it in the next room hanging 
from this screw. 

Mammy had a way of exclaiming, when Brack cried, "Oh, 
he's throwing a fit!" This soon caught and fascinated his at- 
tention so that whenever she exclaimed his tears ceased. Later 
he began simulating the fit without a preliminary of grief, 
doubling his fists and shaking them while his face screwed up 
comically. He never emerged from this performance without 
the proud and confident look of one who has achieved. 



In this spring of 191 5 my parents broke up their home in 
Fort Smith and first my mother, later my father, came to stay 
at Crescent College. My sister came also for the spring and 
early summer, and great was the delight of all in Breckinridge 
and his satisfaction in them. 

At about this time Dick bought a collie puppy for Breckie, 
black with white and tan markings like an idolized Shep of six 
years of my childhood. We called him Jock of Hazeldean and 
he and Breck were inseparable. He slept on the floor under 
Breck's balcony crib and hardly strayed ten feet from his side 
when they played out in the woods together. 

As the quiet weeks of June, linking Crescent College with 
Crescent Hotel, weeks of dear domestic life to us, were passing 
all too quickly I wrote thus in my journal: "Our baby is the 
joy of our fives. I wish I could so visualize his sturdy 
little body and strong, cheerful face as to keep each stage 



22 BRECKIE 

of him before it passes! Most blessed baby, seventeen months 
yesterday, with radiantly happy face, frequent laughter, eager 
little hands — he trots about everywhere, trying to say almost 
anything. Jock is 'Gokkie,' my mother 'Hoho,' Lees 'Sheshoe,' 
and I am *Bop.' I held out for mother and Bop is his render- 
ing of it. In the last two months he has gotten demonstrative 
and tender — often putting his arms about the knees of his loved 
ones (or their necks if he is high enough) and hugging and kiss- 
ing them. This applies to all of us : 'Daddy, Bop, Gokkie, Hoho, 
Mammy.' If he thinks he has offended he rushes to do it. He 
is fond of saying 'How-do' to us and of bowing and shaking 
hands. It is an inspiring sight to see him and Jock solemnly 
shaking hands with each other. Now he begins to put two 
or three words together, as 'Come along, Gokkie,' 'All gone.' 

"But I hear him waking and Mammy is at church. He went 
to sleep late for his afternoon nap and has slept later. O, what 
do summer hotels matter when one has one's best beloved close 
at hand, and when one's child is a radiant manifestation of God! 
While over in Europe the sod was drenched this spring in blood — 
O, the poor souls, — and the bodies of other children wash up 
on the Irish coast from the sunken Lusitania. 

"Now I will go to Breckinridge and he will stand up in his 
crib on the balcony and say : 'How-do, Bop.' " 

Jock did not remain long with us. We never knew the cause 
of his death as there was no veterinary to attend him, nor 
whether he had been poisoned or not. But he had two hard 
fits, in the second of which he died despite all Dick and I could 
do in his behalf. Of all the dogs I have owned and loved he was 
unquestionably the gentlest and the baby's grief for him, though 
limited, was real. For some time afterwards he seldom went out 
walking or to the balcony for his naps without calling : "Gokkie, 
Gokkie," and looking with anticipatory eyes for the little black 
playmate whose devotion for several months had shadowed him. 

3 
In the summer of 191 5 my mother had to go to New York 
for a few weeks and during her absence the baby's godmother, the 



BRECKIE 2a 

"Pansy" of my deep affection, came up to spend two weeks with 
us. Dick and I had asked her to be his godmother and Allen 
Kennedy of Fort Smith his godfather, and beautifully both filled 
that relationship which was in essence a bond though not in fact, 
for Breckinridge was never christened. 

Breckie loved his godmother and when told, at the end of 
the visit, that she had to go he said: "Don't go, Go'm'r." He 
never saw her again but knew her well in her pictures. She only 
stayed ten days and as Mammy was called home at this time by 
the illness of a daughter we spent most of the visit dashing in 
Breckie's wake and saving his life a dozen times an hour. The 
monotony of daily routine was further broken by the need for 
toning up the physical well being of the new puppy, helping the 
kitty through a series of fits, and by the finding of two scorpions 
in my bath tub and a large snake, said by the men on the place 
to be a copperhead, just outside Dick's bedroom door. 

I find by referring to my journal that Breckinridge at twenty 
months weighed naked twenty-eight pounds, seven ounces, and 
was thirty-three and three-fourths inches tall, hardy as a wild 
thing, walking two miles at a stretch, climbing the mountain 
up the Board Walk from Spring Street, never still except when 
sleeping, unbounded in his energy and his interests. I noted 
at this period that his moral nature was visibly awakening and 
that he could easily put several words together, such as: "Bop, 
gie baby baf." Nothing pleased him more that summer than to 
splash around in my big tub a half hour at a time and have 
the cold shower turned on him while he sat in the warm water. 
While I dried him on my lap he would beg for a hair pin. "Hair 
pie," he called it. Then he begged for another. Once I said: 
"You want two hair pins," and after that whenever one had been 
given him he smiled at me and said: "Two hair pies." He 
stuck one between the big and middle toe on each foot. 

He liked to ride in his father's car, which he called : "Daddy's 
autote." Sometimes I rambled alone through the woods and had 
Dick and Breck and Mammy all meet me at an agreed rendez- 
vous on a country road. I vividly recall the pleased, but never 
surprised, expression on the baby's face whenever he first saw 



24 BRECKIE 

me coming towards the car. Comfortably seated on Mammy's 
broad lap he greeted me generally with "Howdy-do, Bop." 

He grew very fond of balls at this period and usually went 
to bed with two large ones and took a tennis ball out walking, 
while to break into the bowling alley and throw around the 
smaller balls there was a keen delight. 

At twenty months he was rhapsodizing over the moon, which 
he had only discovered three moons before. He called it 
"blessed moon" and it and the stars were friends ever after upon 
whose companionship he counted when he slept outdoors alone, 
which he did after the first summer. 

A flock of pigeons had a way of descending on the campus 
lawn to feed and Breckie did love to chase them and stand in 
wonder as they rose, calling out like Mammy: "Pidgy, pidgy, 
pidgy.'' From this came one of the names I had for him. 

Dogs held a high place in his affections and he always wanted 
to run up and hug strange ones. He called them "boo-woos" 
and "goggles." There were usually several on the place, be- 
longing to the men, or strays that had taken up with us through 
our being kind to them. The houseman, George, had a hunting 
dog named "Lead" and a shaggy, black, guard dog named "Jodie." 
A yellow dog we called "Sandy" took refuge with us when 
hurt by an automobile and George called him, with unconscious 
humor, "an old-fashioned cur dog." But when he had recovered 
from his hurt Sandy went away. Still another dog, a hound 
whom the men dubbed "Queen," came to us and had fourteen 
puppies at one swoop, ten of them girls, in the barn. She only 
required our hospitality for a little while, leaving us later. 
Breckie loved all of these — but we wanted him to have a special 
dog of his own and made one more attempt to keep one. This 
third little companion was of all the dogs we had the hardiest, most 
roguish, most like Breck himself — a bull terrier, we called him 
"Camp" after a dog of that breed beloved of Walter Scott. 
Breckie adored him. "Baby kissee Camp," he would say, and 
hard it was to prevent each from kissing the other. If either 
were reproved and in disgrace the other sought to intercede, 
Breck crying out in real distress when Camp had to be house- 




BRECKIE 
Age Twenty Months, with Mammy and Camp 



BRECKIE 25 

broken and Camp creeping up to me uneasily and apologetically 
whenever I spoke firmly to Breck over putting things in his 
mouth. 

October of 191 5 was a glorious month and "baby dear," as he 
then called himself, Mammy, Camp, and I spent the most of its 
afternoons together out on the campus, tumbling about in a 
crimson and yellow shower of maple leaves. I find some of these 
leaves in between the pages of my journal, leaves Breckie brought 
me then with : "Ta ta eaves, Boppie dear." Then off he would 
run, Camp bounding at his heels, to roll over and over in the 
wonderful heaps. Sometimes we picked greens together. Mammy 
and Dorothy helping, with Lead and Jodie looking on and now 
and then Queen coming up to be petted as though she had done 
a praiseworthy act in presenting us with fourteen mongrel pup- 
pies. Sometimes we planted narcissus poeticus bulbs on the 
lawn, Breck and Camp both clumsily assisting by scattering the 
dirt and sand and running off, the one with my trowel and the 
other with my dibble. As surely as I settled down to steady 
planting without them I could count on seeing Mammy's com- 
fortable figure and kind, dark face surmounted by a large white 
cap looming up the walk with Breck and Camp fairly springing 
in ecstasy before her, Breckie calling as he ran : "Baby tumin', 
baby tumin'." 

Sometimes we played in the sand pile I had built for Breckie 
under two of what he later called "pine comb chees." "Such 
golden October afternoons," I wrote in my journal, "such a 
happy baby and dog, such a radiant Bop!" 

For Camp they were abruptly put to an end one day through 
his picking up and eating strychnine in some form not fifteen feet 
from Breck as they climbed the Board Walk with Mammy. He 
died in ten minutes and Breck, catching up Mammy's wail, kept 
repeating solemnly: "Campy's daid." 

It was our last effort to have a dog for him. Three lost in one 
year with other dogs poisoned all around us made us realize 
that we could not at that time attempt to keep one in Eureka 
Springs. So Camp went after Jock and Tidy to the happy dog 
star and again, in his limited fashion, our baby mourned a friend. 



26 BRECKIE 

It was weeks before Camp passed altogether from his memory, 
before he could see a bone without exclaiming: "Bone, Campy. 
Come gie bone, Campy dear." Many times he said solemnly: 
"Camp daid," once in a while adding: ''Come back, Campy 
dear." 



Breckie made mighty efforts this autumn of 1915 to tell things, 
his experience and thoughts about them always exceeding his 
vocabulary. 

A few days before Camp was poisoned when he and Mammy 
and Camp came back from their early walk he appeared fairly 
bursting with excitement and exclamations. Mammy explained 
that they had been looking for the nanny goat that lived down 
below the Hardin spring on the eastern slope of the Crescent 
mountain and had finally seen her through the crack of a barn 
door with her head caught, and that she had directed some little 
boys to let her loose. 

But Baby meanwhile was giving me bits of these matters in dis- 
jointed sentences : "Baby see Mammy goat fwough er c'ack." 

" 'Ittle boys, 'ittle boys ! 'Et Mammy goat 'oose, 'ittle boys !" 

"Mammy goat fwough er c'ack." 

The goat so bewitched him that autumn that he talked of her 
nearly every day and sometimes at night when he woke I heard 
him calling out : " 'Ittle boys, 'ittle boys, 'et Mammy goat 'oose, 
'ittle boys !" 

One night when it was raining I heard him singing the re- 
frain of a song: "Oh, what a wet, wet day!" 

On November third I wrote as follows in my journal : "Yes- 
terday at about five in the afternoon Dick and I took the baby 
from Mammy and walked with him down the western slope of 
the mountain to Dairy Hollow and up by another road, reaching 
home at six, supper, and bedtime with Mammy ready for both. 
Down in the Hollow Dick gave the baby his first real lesson in 
throwing rocks at objects and we were enchanted when he 
hit a bucket at five feet. I shouted : 'Hurrah for baby,' and he 
repeated it, looking pleased. Indeed it was a good throw for 



BRECKIE 27 

twenty-one months. . . . He lives out of doors, walking up and 
down the hills, his eager little feet never still except in sleep." 

On November thirteenth he drew a mark for me and said it 
was "A.R.K." 

He was interested in caterpillars this autumn and I told him 
they would be butterflies when the days got warm again. I 
showed him pictures of butterflies and said he should chase 
them. This so pleased him that he often spoke during the fol- 
lowing winter of chasing them, and with the first gay butterflies 
of the early spring (and the butterflies in the Ozarks are very 
gay) he reveled in the fulfilment of my prophecy. 

The first favorites among his picture books, and he had be- 
gun to love them in the summer, were two English publications 
called "Babes and Beasts" (which he called the Boo-cow-boo 
book) and "Babes and Birds" (Gobble-gobble book,) with charm- 
ing illustrations. Other favorites were an old cardboard "Peep 
at the Animal World" which had been mine, and a cardboard 
copy of the "Three Little Pigs," graphically illustrated, which 
had belonged to my sister. 

At twenty-two months Breck's naked weight was thirty pounds 
and his height in his stocking feet thirty-four and a half inches. 
On November nineteenth I wrote: "The past two days have 
been a bit too bleak for Mammy's rheumatic legs, especially 
towards night-fall, and I have had Breck out with me on the 
East Terrace from about four o'clock on until his supper time. 
We have been working in the flower beds together, I with trowel 
and he with a Httle 'shobel.' This tiny bit of sweet alyssum" (it 
lies between the pages of my journal yet) "he gave me the first 
afternoon — the only flower left blooming by the last frost, al- 
most as hardy as an evergreen, sunny, clean, and sweet, — how 
like Breck it is ! ft has been for years one of my favorite 
flowers, that I grow wherever I am for a season. Eleanor (here 
the other day for a ■'dsit which was cut short in a day by the 
sort of appeal from absent friends in trouble she never denies) 
smiled when she saw my sweet alyssum and said: 'You are 
never without it.' 

"Breck is getting most companionable. He rarely stuffs things 



28 BRECKIE 

in his mouth now and when he does says quickly : 'Baby so'y.' 
He doesn't try to run away, but works contentedly along with me 
and the man I sometimes have to help me. Together we have 
pulled up all the dead scarlet sage bushes, cut off the tops of the 
cannas, transplated several of the perennials, and cleared the 
beds of old marigold and zinnia stalks. To-day they must be 
spaded, in and out around the peonies, lilies, etc., and then I shall 
plant more bulbs in them : Emperor narcissus and Darwin tulips. 

"Day before yesterday Dick told Breck to count and said: 
'One !' Breck : Two.' Daddy : 'Three.' Breck : 'Four.' Daddy : 
'Five.' Breck : 'Six.' Daddy : 'Seven.' Breck : 'Eight.' Daddy : 
'Nine,' Breck: 'Ten.' This he has picked up from having his 
toes counted, I suppose, and from counting buttons, ribs, etc. 
The alternating counting is all he can do beyond two or three. 
He can't grasp a long sequence unassisted. He doesn't like his 
ribs counted and says: 'Gogo (don't) count baby's 'ibs.' " 

When my mother got back from New York in the late summer 
Breckie was delighted. She helped a good deal in the care of him 
that autumn and he became especially attached to her so that 
when she ran down to Fort Smith for a brief visit in Novem- 
ber he seemed to miss her. She got back one evening after he 
had gone to bed on his balcony and when he came in at ten for 
his bottle of milk and to sleep in his indoor crib the balance of 
the night, he saw her with apparent delight. He went to her in 
tenderest affection and kept holding out his hands to her be- 
fore being tucked in bed, saying over and over : "How-do, Hoho, 
How-do, Hoho." 

She often wore a dress in the evenings of which he was fond 
because it had buttons which attracted him. When she came 
in with it on he ran to her, climbed into her lap and began to 
count what he called the "bupons" — "two, fwee. . . ." 



My journal is full of allusions to Breck's future, to some as yet 
unknown work for which I believed him to be destined. I wrote 
one day of my own bit of work as secretary for the Arkansas 



BRECKIE 29 

committee of the Red Cross Nursing service and of the cor- 
respondence it entailed, and I added : "What a little backwater of 
a place I am living in now in these terrible times. ... I devour 
newspapers, reviews, books, anything that tells of what is go- 
ing on in this great and awful war. One feels as if one had 
no right to be out of it, to be planting bulbs, . . . while over 
there, oh, over there. . . . But my thoughts are never half a day 
from this crisis and if I am living in a backwater now I am 
rearing a man child who will emerge some day to lead the crisis of 
his age — and a backwater is a good place for the rearing of such 
a man child." But the destiny wasn't to be here, Breckie darling. 
That's what we didn't foresee, you and I, nor that it might per- 
haps be as great a destiny There as here. 

Tenderness and demonstrations of affection once having be- 
gun their growth in Breckinridge he ever grew more demonstra- 
tive and loving with each month of his remaining years. At the 
period of which I am writing, shortly before he was two years 
old, he sometimes roused in the night sufficiently to say: "Bop, 
kiss your baby dear," dropping off to sleep again when I had 
roused sufficiently to do it. One night about ten, soon after he 
had been carried gently from his outdoor to his indoor crib, he 
sang out the usual : "Bop, kiss your baby dear." Now I had 
not been long abed and I had just been kissing him, so I didn't 
want to sit up in the cold to do it over. Therefore I said: 
"Bop is too cold. Baby go to sleep." 

There was a moment's silence, then a thoughtful voice rose 
from out the neighboring crib. It said: "Bop too cold kiss 
baby dear." 

Whereupon I sprang up, crying out: "No, she isn't," and 
Dick, snugly ensconced under the eiderdown comfort, laughed 
aloud. 

On the Thanksgiving day of 1915 we put Breck in a little white 
wicker chair I had just bought for him, in front of a little white 
enameled table George had just made, and set before him his 
zwieback and broth in the silver porringer Breck Campbell had 
given him — all for the first time. Hitherto he had eaten on 



30 BRECKIE 

Mammy's or his grandmother's or my lap, but he already 
handled his spoon well and spilled very little. 

As our apartments were, though numerous and commodious, 
on the second floor in the southeast wing of a large building and 
very far from the service part of the institution, I had arranged 
for a sort of Milk Laboratory, as we called it, later Milk Room, 
for the baby, connected with our suite. Here we had a stove for 
him, first electric, then alchohol, then coal oil, on which I pas- 
teurized his milk every day. In the darkest and coolest corner 
stood his own small refrigerator, presented by his grandmother, 
with room in the top for twenty pounds of ice, his bottles of 
milk (one for each of his four daily meals), and pasteurized 
creamery butter, and at the bottom space for baked apples, jel- 
lied broths, cereals, prunes, eggs, — and the other usual things 
making up the scientifically planned dietary of a very little child. 
An old marble-topped bureau that had been scrubbed and sunned 
and a table held the requisite pots, the oranges, measures, glass 
jars filled with graham and other crackers, the clean bottles, cups, 
etc. In the paper lined top drawer of this bureau I kept his 
special dish cloths, the non-absorbent cotton for stoppering his 
bottles, bread knife, etc. In a bread box on the table we put his 
special bread, wheat or rye or other dark bread, baked three 
times a week by a friend, a native of Switzerland. This same 
lady supplied us with fresh laid eggs. At no time did Breckin- 
ridge ever have anything to eat not scientifically planned as suited 
to his age and regularly served at correct intervals. He never 
ate between meals. He never had a piece of candy in his life, 
and, knowing nothing of it, had no desire for it. The machinery 
of his little body moved in almost unbroken harmony throughout 
his four years. < 

6 

On December sixth I had taken Breckie with me between one 
and two in the afternoon down to the grocery known as Mc- 
Laughlin's to get mints and lemons for one of a series of teas I 
was giving the students. In returning we took the grassy road 
by the beautiful memorial Catholic church set in a niche on the 



BRECKIE 31 

side of the mountain below Crescent, its red tiled roof gleaming 
above gray stone walls. Its rose window Breck called a wheel. 
I decided we would go in. It was Breck's first entry into a 
church and I had him pull off his knitted cap as we opened the 
bronze doors. Then I showed him the little Christ and, as we 
left, he gurgled with delight over dropping a coin all by himself in 
the alms box. 

A few days later I was, with Dorothy's help, making ready for 
another of these teas when an incident occurred of which I copy 
the account from my journal as I wrote it then: "The tea table 
was set out in my study in preparation. An exquisite little thing 
of mahogany it is with embroidered cover and doilies, big silver 
tray and service, and, arranged on the shelf below, were the cups 
and saucers. Upon these Breckinridge seized, dropping several 
on the floor and breaking one. 

'T heard the clatter and ran in from an adjoining room, having 
ventured to leave him for a moment — or rather having ventured 
not to follow immediately when he left me. 

" 'Baby,' I said, when I saw the broken cup, and I said it sor- 
rowfully, 'Baby has broken Bop's poor cup. Poor Boppie. Poor 
cup!' 

" 'Boppie fix it,' he replied, bringing me the pieces. 

" 'Boppie can't fix it,' said I, showing him how they fell apart 
when joined. 'Baby broke Boppie's cup. Poor cup. Poor Bop- 
pie. Oh, Baby, how could you break Boppie's cup !' 

"In reply he burst out weeping and ran into my arms crying: 
'Baby so'y. Bop. Baby so'y (sorry).' 

"My lamb, my best loved treasure, how I gathered you in! 
How we clung to each other and how quickly the ever-ready 
smiles dispersed your tears ! 

"Oh, God, was I wise or cruel? Was I unjust? There came 
not a note of harshness in my voice, but was it just to make him 
sad? Of course I know that in breaking the cup he had done 
no shadow of wrong, had only been at his legitimate occupation 
of investigation. My purpose was to teach him so that another 
time he would recall the ownership of the tea table, the fragility 



32 BRECKIE 

of china, and let them alone. Perhaps he won't do either ! Then 
we can try again, always gently, always patiently. How easy it is 
to be patient with a creature dearer ten thousand times than all 
one's possessions ! But did I do right, was I wise ?" 

I had not, I remember, then or at any subsequent time a single 
possession out in his sight that Breckinridge was not permitted 
to touch provided he asked permission. I had learned that an 
object lacks form to a young child until he has felt it, so 
many were the things I gave Breckie to feel and know. But 
I did, from the first, try at the same time to teach him that 
certain special things belonged to special people and that he 
should ask before he touched them. This was a long and patient 
lesson, but I ever kept the principle before him and to emphasize 
it we did not encroach upon his rights, his own possessions, with- 
out first obtaining his permission. His godmother recalls how on 
her visit in his second year he would point to his books and say : 
"Baby's books," and to mine on another shelf and say : "Boppie's 
books." 

In his third and especially in his fourth year he came to know 
the lesson almost by heart and asked to play on my typewriter 
or to look in my desk drawer nearly always before doing either. 
With the greatest sweetness he accorded similar privileges with 
his things : "You can dwink out of my cup, Boppie." "Breckie, 
may I use your scissors ?" "Yes, sir." And if he found any one 
making use of his belongings without permission he nearly always 
said reproachfully : "You didn't ask." 

Needless to say in teaching him this tremendous lesson of the 
rights of ownership we never punished him for his innumerable 
failures. We knew that the principle could not be mastered with- 
out the failures and it was no part of our plan to penalize his 
immaturity. Punishments were not, in fact, at any time a part 
of our plan in rearing him, because we preferred the slower, 
deeper, juster way of reason hand in hand with patience. 

I have recorded that the first question Breckie ever asked was 
on December fifteenth of this year when he lacked nearly a month 
of being two years old. He said to one of the men on the 
place, Dorothy's husband: "George, where are you going?" 



BRECKIE ' 33 



Christmas of 191 5 we had much sickness, but Breckie kept his 
usual perfect heahh. My father spent the hoHdays with us and 
had the grip, as did my mother. Dorothy had the grip too, which 
left me with the housework of my apartments, and Mammy was 
barely able to creep around because of a heavy cold, so that I 
dared not have her close to Breckinridge. What with house- 
work, nursing and care of baby, mine were busy holidays, but 
precious ones in many years. My brother Carson, then a cap- 
tain in the Marine Corps and stationed at Washington, came 
down for two and a half days and he and Dick decorated a little 
tree in my mother's room for Breckie. This was the last time he 
and Breckie were to meet, although the thought of this uncle in 
his country's service was to become one of the guiding forces in 
the nephew's life. 

Under the tree stood the hobby horse Dick and I gave Breck 
from Santa Claus. He had been told he would get one and when 
he came into the room he made straight for the horse as though 
for a moment he saw nothing else. But there were a super- 
abundance of other things as well, since many friends had been 
kind. I kept a list of his presents on this his second Christmas, 
thinking he might like to read it later. Carson had brought him 
from Washington a small basket ball, a push button electric light, 
and four rubber animals, a bear, a goat, a horse (Lady Light- 
foot), and a dog. Of the latter one remains, the "Mammy goat." 
Her face has been bitten off, but she continues to hold her own in 
the little master's toy box among later acquisitions. This toy 
box is a substantial one of wood, twenty-four inches long, nine 
and a half inches high and thirteen inches broad. It belonged to 
my father and came many years ago from Washington to Fort 
Smith packed with papers. Elbowing the nanny goat in it now 
are other toys dating back to this Christmas, notably a wooden 
horse called Kitchener, sent Breck from England by my friend 

Frances J in Sussex, — a flat horse, jointed, on which a gay 

pink coated hunter once rode manfully. He and the horse were 
both made under special circumstances for a war fund. 



34 BRECKIE 

My sister Lees sent Breck a pair of boxing gloves and these 
are lying now in a drawer of an old mahogany chest where he 
kept his leggings and mittens and caps. His grandmother gave 
him a coat, to help me out, and for himself a large nickel watch, 
all his own, and never to be returned to an adult pocket until he 
had heard enough "tick, tick." This watch lies in a drawer of 
my desk, for he lent it to me two years afterwards, but only 
the minute hand is left intact, the crystal has long been broken, 
and the face is smeared from dirty little hands. In addition the 
mainspring must be broken for the watch has stopped. 

From my cousin Anne came a pistol with holster and belt. 
For this he was then too young but it was later to become 
one of his dearest possessions and one of the last to be played 
with. In fact it is lying now just where he left it on a book-shelf 
in my study. 

His godmother sent the exquisite Jessie Wilcox Smith edition of 
the "Child's Garden of Verse," but of his books I will write later 
for in his fourth year they took a firm hold on his afifections. 
From his godfather came a silver knife, fork, and spoon which 
he used constantly. Then from many other friends there were 
blocks, books, a top, a rubber hammer which couldn't injure 
chairs be they never so banged upon, a little red coal scuttle from 
Dorothy that he left at "The Brackens" in Canada the following 
autumn, a sheepskin rug from old friends in North Carolina on 
which he slept outdoors in bitter weather, and two character 
dolls. One of them Mammy named "Jess" after her first hus- 
band. The other, "Tommy Tucker," minus both legs, lies on 
his back at this moment in the toy box in the company of 
Kitchener and the nanny goat. 

Altogether Breckie received so many things this Christmas as 
almost to suggest the presents which poured in at the time 
of his birth, only those came from all parts of the globe, includ- 
ing, besides all the American things, a satin pillow from England, 
an embroidered cap from Italy, and a crepe-de-chine coverlet 
from Japan. 

Mammy named the hobby horse "Stacey" in memory of a 
defunct steed of that name which had belonged to her. Breckie 



BRECKIE 35 

seldom used the reins in riding, but held on by the neck or mane. 
Stacey, a large, well-built horse, is still intact except for dents 
in the nose from a real hammer, but I find on examination that 
little hands quite lately had broken the reins and tied them to 
one forefoot, while a blue ribbon is tied about the left stirrup. 

On the last day of the old year of 191 5, so I read in my 
record, Breck and I took a walk together of two or three miles 
in the rain and he learned the difference between hog and barbed 
wire fences. He knew the names of mullen plants and buck- 
bushes, so I read, shaking hands with one mullen leaf as if with 
an old friend, and we hunted for crows. A rather remarkable 
incident occurred that afternoon which I carefully noted in my 
journal the next day. While we trudged along under one um- 
brella the sun shot out suddenly through the rain. 

"See the glorious sun," said I. There was a short silence while 
Breck observed the to him hitherto unknown phenomenon of 
simultaneous sunshine and rain. Then he said : 

"G'owious sun take a baf (bath)." 



THIRD YEAR 

In a wonderland they lie, 
Dreaming as the days go by, 
Dreaming as the summers die: 

Ever drifting down the stream — 
Lingering in the golden gleam — 
Life, what is it but a dream? 

— Lewis Carholu 



/^N the twelfth of January, 1916, came Breckinridge's second 
^^ birthday. I had been reading a number of authoritative 
books during the past year on both physical and mental develop- 
ment of children and I find, dated January eighteenth, the follow- 
ing notes in my journal: "His weight, naked, and height, in his 
stocking feet, are on his birthday almost exactly what they were 
at twenty-three months, viz. : weight thirty-one pounds, height 
thirty-five and a fourth inches. I ascribe the lack of his usual 
growth during the past month to his cutting two more big jaw 
teeth and necessary dieting. He now has eighteen teeth and 
his weight at two years is just one pound less than Holt gives 
as the average weight for boys at three years, and his height 
is one-fourth of an inch more than the average at three years. 
The circumference of his head, if I measure correctly, and I 
think I do, is normal for two years, viz : nineteen inches. The 
circumference of his chest is three inches over normal, viz: 
twenty-two inches. — A good start, my man. How I trust that 
I can so rear you that your possible attainments will never be 
handicapped by a physique in the smallest particular defective. 

"It isn't enough to love one's child profoundly. One must 
put one's brains at his service in advance of his demands. As to 
the outcome — I never doubt it for a moment. There is the 
stuff of a great man in Breckinridge." 

After all, Breckie fell heir this winter to another dog, a female 
fox terrier puppy, with a black patch over one eye from which 
she drew her name. She was given us by a butcher and as 
she is, though affectionate, not bright or pedigreed, or espe- 
cially desirable, she has thriven down to this day. When Clifton 
at Cornell heard about her he wrote : "My condolences to Sister 
Mary over her new dog, for by the time this reaches you I pre- 
sume it will have been poisoned." 

39 



40 BRECKIE 

Patch was never the companionable pet to Breckinridge his 
other Httle dogs had been and during the next summer she de- 
serted him ahogether for my father, to whom she has remained 
constant in her devotion ever since. 

In January I wrote again : "In spite of all our care Breck meets 
with mischances occasionally, usually tumbles, but a few days 
ago during a recent bitter spell of weather he got frosted in 
both cheeks and chin. When the thermometer hovered around 
zero I was afraid of the outdoors for him late at night. I let 
him go to sleep out on his balcony as usual, on the sheepskin, 
in sleeping bag, tucked in wool comforts, in his all-flannel night- 
drawers with feet, and light silk and wool shirt and band; but 
I promptly brought him in when he had fallen asleep and put 
him in his indoor crib in my room, with open windows. 

"It never entered my head, however, that it might be too cold 
for him outdoors in the day time, and I never heard of any one 
in Arkansas getting frosted. So on the first bitter day, with 
the thermometer just above zero, we went out as usual for a 
walk, he and Patch and I. (Mammy rarely goes out walking 
in bad weather and if she does venture she is ill.) There was 
a fine, driving snow with much wind and Patch looked so miser- 
able I put her in my sweater. But Babekins, in leggings, over- 
shoes, wadded coat with fur collar, fleece lined mittens, and 
wool cap pulled over his ears, did not look or declare himself 
cold, and his rosy cheeks appeared as usual. However, during 
the days following it has developed that they are tender to the 
touch and hard in spots. When Dr. Phillips examined him 
Br€ckie said: 'Gogo (Don't) pet Baby face, Gocker Phips. Baby 
face sore.' Mammy is putting on the cheeks twice a day some 
of the mutton suet dear old Alice got ready for him the summer 
at 'the Brackens' before he was born. The trouble seems to be 
slowly clearing up, but I blame myself for this accident to my 
lamb." 



Some time before his second birthday Breckinridge was re- 
peating fragments of Mother Goose rhymes. At two years he 



BRECKIE 41 

could say quite accurately: "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son" 
(Mammy's version, which concludes thus: "Pig got loose and 
killed ma goose, and dey put ole Tom in de callyboose."), "Ding, 
dong dell" (all but the last lines and insisting that Baby pulled 
pussy out of the well), "Rock-a-bye, Baby," "Bye Baby Bunting," 
parts of "The Three Little Kittens," and many other fragments. 
His "Ring around the Rosy" was also Mammy's version, char- 
acteristically modified in transmission : 

"Ring around de rosy. 
Pocket full o' posy, 
Squat little Josie." 

Breckie loved it and when he said : "Quat 'ittle Dosie" he ducked 
his fat little person down. 

He also knew at this time several songs wholly or in part, 
isuch as : 

"I won't have any your weevily wheat, 
I won't have any your barley," 

"Where are you going, Billy boy, Billy boy. 
Where are you going, charming Billy?" 

"Oh, dear, what can the matter be, 
Johnny's so long at the fair," 

"Ha, ha, ha, you and me. 

Little Brown Jug how I love thee," 

"I'm Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines," 

"Cheek or chin, knuckle or knee. 
Where shall the baby's dimple be?" 

"Go tell Aunt Rhody de ole gray goose is daid," 

"I see de boat go round de bend. 
Good-bye, ma lover, good-bye," 



and 



"Ole Dan Tucker was a mean ole man," 

"De ole gray horse came a tarin' out of de wilderness," 

"Step light, ladies, Oh, Miss Lou, 

Neber mind de wedder so de wind don't blew." 



42 BRECKIE 

This last was an especial favorite of mine, so my mother says, 
and taught me at the same age by an old negro servant of ours, 
"Aunt Nancy." 

One time during this third year, but I have unfortunately no 
record of the exact date, I sang to Breckie the second part of 
"Rockabye, baby, on. the tree top," as follows : 

"Rockabye, rockabye, mother is near, 
Rockabye, rockabye, nothing to fear." 

The tune is, I admit, a bit wistful, though not so much so as 
the negro melodies, and my capacity for carrying any tune in a 
pleasing fashion slender. As I sang this Breckie turned upon 
me his deep blue eyes in which tears were gathering. 

"Dat makes Baby feel bad," he said, and began to sob. With 
caresses and tender words I asked him to tell me where it made 
him feel bad. He instantly put a hand on his throat, saying: 
"Dere." 

At intervals of several weeks I tried the song again, but 
Breckie either began to cry or else stopped me at the first words 
of the second part, putting his hand on his throat as indicative 
of the place where it made him feel bad. Finally we agreed 
beforehand that when I began to sing this song I should never 
go beyond the first part. 

He never objected to any other song on the score of its making 
him feel bad, and in his fourth year he ceased objecting to that 
one. I tried it after an interval of months, and apparently he 
took no more notice of it than of any other. It became his 
custom in his fourth year whenever I sang or told a rhyme he 
did not at that moment want, to say, very politely, "Please stop." 

Shortly after his second birthday I told Breckinridge his first 
consecutive story, not in jingles, that of "The Three Bears." 
I wrote: "He grasped the elements of it at once and now asks 
for it often and interlards the recital with his own comments, 
such as 'No, no. Goldilocks, gogo eat bears' pease po'idge cold,' 
and (after she breaks the chair of the little bear, represented as 
being not much larger than his cherished Teddy bear) 'Bop, git 
George fix it.' " 



BRECKIE 43 



On the night of February third in 1916 I put on a dress Breck 
had not seen before, a heavy dark green silk which had been 
one of my mother's Paris frocks in her Russian days, later re- 
made by a St. Louis dressmaker, and that winter adapted to my 
figure by Dorothy! 

Breckie lay in my arms just before my supper and his bed- 
time observing this historic garment. Then he touched the sleeve 
and said : "Bop's pitty dess. Bop got on pitty dess." 

"Do you like it ?" I asked, and he replied emphatically : "Yes, 
sir!" 

He was from that time on and even earlier, as witness his 
interest months before in the buttons on a gown of my mother's, 
as observant of clothes as of everything else and frequently re- 
marked upon his own and those of others. The summer he was 
eighteen months old, to go back a bit, after my sister had left, 
he often went into my mother's bathroom, touched a dressing 
gown of hers that Lees had worn, and said: "Sheeshoe, come 
back." Later in the year he said once, on touching this dressing 
gown: "Tell Sheeshoe come git her clo'es." 

I find this rather exceptional note in my journal, dated Febru- 
ary ninth, 191 6, when Breck was nearly one month over two years 
old: "Yesterday morning Breckinridge awoke suddenly and sat 
up in his crib instantly, as is usual with him: 

" *Bop,' he said, 'calfie sat down on de gwound' (ground). 

"I saw at once that he had been dreaming, and this was the 
first time he had ever told me anything I clearly placed as a 
dream. 

" 'What did the calf do,' I asked, 'when it sat on the ground?' 

" 'Calfie eat birdies.' 

" 'Oh, no,' I said, 'Calf eats grass and flowers.' 

"But he persisted : 'Calfie eat birdies on de gwound.' " 

At about this time Mammy took a vacation of a few weeks to 
visit her daughter and granddaughter whom she spoke of as 
"Jinnie May" and "Liza" and whom Breckie considered as one 
person, Dorothy helped me with Breck during her absence. 



44 BRECKIE 

Mammy's children made frequent demands on her. One inci- 
dent, become famous in our family, is that of Mammy being 
called to the long distance telephone to talk to Kansas City where 
her married daughter lived. She couldn't take the call until 
she had first paid for it and she was so scared over the probable 
ill news such an exceptional and costly thing portended that I 
had to support her, in tears and trembling, into the booth. 
What was her wrath to find that the call came from her son-in- 
law, who wanted her to send him fifteen dollars so that he 
could go to the funeral of an aunt in Oklahoma. Mammy's 
daughter put in the plea for him, but all I could hear at our 
end was poor Mammy's tearful voice in rising indignation 
ejaculate : "But, I tells yer, I aint got it." 

I have a note in my journal during the February of Mammy's 
visit to Jinnie May and Liza that Breck is cutting his last two 
jaw teeth and is a restless sleeper, but not very fretful. I added 
that he was quite ready to diet himself when teething. 

I note that at two years and two months he "carries water 
from the bathtub to the hand basin or Patch's drinking pan and 
with such steadiness that he rarely spills a drop. And he can 
drink a glass of water as easily as I do except that he holds it 
with two hands." 

He began going to breakfast with his father this winter, not 
that he ate his breakfast then, but he sat in a high chair by him 
and drank a full glass of water and sometimes, as a special 
treat, ate a little salt from the palm of his own hand! It was 
my custom to take breakfast in my own room, and a little later 
Breck invariably ate his with his father when the latter was at 
home — his bowl of cereal, cup of milk, and slice of stale brown 
bread and butter regularly served on a tray with his father's meal. 
He never expected anything but his accustomed rations and 
his other meals were always eaten at his own little table 
upstairs. 

I find this characteristic note in my journal, written during 
Mammy's February, 191 6, vacation : "I got in shortly before my 
supper and found Babekins eating his at his little white table, 
with Dorothy by, but feeding himself and doing it well. When 



BRECKIE 45 

he saw me he smiled all over his charming face, saying: "Howdy- 
do, Boppy dear. Howdy-do.' " 

One night in this same February I felt sure that his ear 
ached. He was restless anyway with his nineteenth tooth just 
about through and the twentieth not yet in sight through swollen 
gums. But the ear ache was over and above all that. He kept 
pulling at his ear and finally said there was a bug in it, and 
asked me to kiss it. Then he shook his head back and forth 
on his bed in a way I had often remarked in my training as a 
nurse at St. Luke's with babies with ear trouble. Next day 
Mammy, back from her vacation, and Patch and I went with 
him to the office of Dr. Huntington, an ear specialist. 

"He will give you little funnels to play with," I said. "Won't 
that be fun?" 

So he shook hands happily with Dr. Huntington, asked at 
once for the funnels, and while he sat playing with one offered 
no objection to having another put in his ear. There was a 
little redness, which cleared up promptly under treatment and 
never returned. 

On February twenty-sixth Breck set up a row of blocks on 
end and I covered a few central ones, and said : "Now this is 
Stonehenge." Then I got out a volume of the eleventh edition 
of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," which had been my father's 
wedding present to Dick and me, and showed him a good photo- 
graph of the wonderful old pile. He was intensely interested 
and often built "Ton-enge" after that, always asking to see the 
picture. 



In this same winter of 1916 we began hoping for another 
little child to bless us with its presence as the first had done. I 
quote fragments in allusion to it from my journal of that Feb- 
ruary : "It is true that Breckinridge, so far as I know, represents 
out of all eternity the beginning of motherhood for me. Herein 
is a first baby always more marvelous than the others — but not 
dearer, I am sure not dearer. I want this new little creature 
that is coming — how I want it ! Little baby, that is not yet, but 



46 BRECKIE 

will be when the long, hard way is past, — it is awful to get you, 
little baby. I know now how awful since your brother came. 
But you, like him, will be worth it a thousandfold. 

"But what else on earth is worth it? For what else but the 
creation of life would one voluntarily face such suffering? 
Even now, half-starved, weak, ... I have crept out to the group 
of trees under B reek's sleeping porch to write and ponder. 
What else is worth it? 

"It is the balmiest of soft days, 'so cool, so calm, so bright, — 
the bridal of the earth and sky.' The ground is redolent. I 
worked in it yesterday for an hour with my trowel, and then grew 
so tired ... so utterly tired. . . . 

"But to-day I am starting in with a bit of strength renewed. 
I have been reading Jean Ingelow's 'Songs of Seven' (which 
I love) to make me happy. I love also this group of trees: two 
big pines, a hard and a soft wood maple, an apple tree and a 
curious tiny tree with silver leaves, not indigenous, but whose 
name no one here knows. About its roots two years ago I 
planted crocuses. Before long they will be springing up and the 
apple tree will be white with blossoms. Then comes a hot 
summer . . . but in the early autumn, with the first red and 
yellow leaves, you will be here, my little second baby, my welcome 
little second baby. 

"I was telling Breck the other day about 'Hot Cross Buns,' 
winding up, 'If you haven't any daughters then buy them for 
your sons.' 

" 'Bop,' said he, 'Buy Baby a daughter.' 

" 'That would be a little girl,' I replied. 

" 'Boppie,' said he, 'Buy Baby 'ittle girl.' 

"Now nearly every day he begs for one and promises to share 
'Stacey' with her, and, when he isn't hungry, he agrees also 
to divide his food. But when a meal time comes around he often 
begins exclaiming: 'No, 'ittle girl can't have Baby dear's pease 
po'idge cold. Mammy bwing Baby's milk 'fore 'ittle girl gits 
it.' " 

On March fourteenth I noted that Breck had cut his twentieth 



BRECKIE 47 

and last tooth. On April first I wrote as follows : "Our wonder 
boy grows apace in the sweetness of his sunny nature, in vigor, 
in intellectual development. We tested his mentality a few 
weeks ago by the Binet-Simon scale and he was instantly and 
correctly responsive to the tests for three and four years. 

"He is learning camp meeting hymns from Mammy of which 
his favorite is : 

"Way down yonder by myse'f, 
Couldn't hear nobody pray. 

"He also sings with much patting of hands : 

"Oh, sistern de bwidegwoom-me done come. 
Oh, sistern de bwidegwoom-me done come, 
Oh, sistern de bwidegwoom-me done come, 
Awise and twimme yoh lamps. 

I am afraid that his conversation is chiefly a mixture of baby 
talk and darkey talk like Mammy's, though Dick is diligent in 
correcting both. The other night he woke me up to ask: 
'Boppie, is yer got any owanges?' 

"When I said I had he asked : 'Is yer got any for de 'ittle 
girl?' 

"Then he counseled me to ask 'de good, kind moo-cow' to 
get oranges for the little girl. 

"Mammy is absent again for awhile and Dorothy nurse. He 
speculated for awhile as to Mammy's absence, then asked me 
point blank: 'Bop, where is Mammy?' 

"My little son, never yet have I told you even the faintest of 
white lies and never will I tell you one. When you ask for 
a cracker at a time when crackers are not distributed I never 
tell you they aren't there. I tell you yes, Boppie has plenty of 
them in the Milk Room and Baby shall have one for supper — 
but not now. Your candid eyes will never meet anything but 
equal candor in mine and you shall know that though the whole 
world deceived you your mother would not, that from her you 
must often expect mistaken judgments and false opinions (for 
our opinions are tentative and formative many times) but never 
an untruth, never, never an untruth." 



48 BRECKIE 

Early in April Patch was taken suddenly and mysteriously ill. 
I worked over her and pulled her through, but suspected poison 
of some sort. Said Breck to me on April sixteenth : 'Tatchie 
sick." 

"Patch is well now," I answered. He looked seriously at me 
while he replied : 

"Mammy sho' did tell Baby Patchie was sick." 



On April eighteenth I wrote as follows in my journal : "I 
am going to Fort Smith to-morrow to see Dr. Cooper and while 
there I shall make little visits to Caroline and Pansy, being gone 
in all six days. Never have I left my boy for even one whole 
day except that other time when I ran down to Fort Smith for 
two nights. I wouldn't make the trip and leave him now just 
for diversion — but I have to go and while there I shall take the 
change and relaxation I really need. Even so I must train my 
mind rapidly into acquiescence with its own plans, for I shall 
hunger for my son. He will be well off with my mother, 
Mammy, and Dick, with Dorothy coming over every morning 
to pasteurize the milk and help Mammy at his bath. But I 
shall so miss him. To-day Mammy said to him: 

** 'Shall we go in de auto to see Boppie go off on de choo-choo 
train?' 

"His eyes filled at once and he said: 'Boppie, don't go off on 
de choo-choo twain.' 

"One of his expressions when urging my nearness is : 'Don't 
weave Baby.' " 

I have been looking over the letters from my mother and 
Dick written to me during this visit in Fort Smith and full 
chiefly of details of Breck. In the first one my mother says 
the baby had asked for me several times but was always com- 
forted with the expectation of the shoe strings I promised to 
bring back to him. In the second one she writes: 

"I avoided bringing you up as a subject of conversation last 
night but this morning thought I would risk it and said: 'Baby, 



BRECKIE 49 

I am going to write to Boppie this morning. What must I tell 
her?' Between mouthfuls of pease porridge hot he answered: 
'Tell Boppie to come back.' I said: 'Must I tell her to bring 
Baby shoe strings ?' 'No, sir, tell her to bwing somefing else.' I 
said: 'Why, doesn't Baby want some nice, new shoe strings?' 
'Ya, ma'am, and somefing else.' He was perfectly composed in 
speaking of you and very positive about the something else. He 
is sleeping soundly at present (on his balcony) while a storm 
rages about him." 

During my absence it had been arranged for Mammy to sleep 
in my room by his crib when he was brought in at about ten each 
night from his outdoor bed. My mother writes that he did not 
awaken on being brought in as usual the first night of my absence 
but did wake up, according to Mammy, at twelve and stayed 
awake until three. Mammy reports, however, that she herself 
went to sleep. He asked for water once or twice and to be 
kissed and Mammy handed the water and gave the kisses in 
silence, hoping he would not notice she had taken Boppie's ac- 
customed place. But she said that as she was dozing she heard 
an exclamation, which was of pleasure according to her, and 
Baby crawled out from under his cover and jumped on her, 
exclaiming: "It's Mammy wid a white cap." "He was," wrote 
my mother, "apparently, reconciled to the change." 

When pressed frequently for messages to send me he gave 
them as follows : "Tell Boppie to come back," "Tell Boppie Baby 
got eyes and nose." "Tell Boppie to bwing somefing else." 
And, through his father, "Tell Boppie Baby good 'ittle boy." 
But when asked if I should be told that he loved me he said 
positively : "No, sir." However, a scrawled bit of paper is en- 
closed in one of my mother's letters, where she guided his hand 
in holding what he called a "pensule" and forming the words : 
"Dear Boppie, I love you. Baby," which she said were entirely 
his own. 

Once, too, my mother asked him : "If Baby saw Boppie coming 
in the room what would Baby say to her?" The reply came 
promptly : "Boppie, take Baby out." 

When asked what he had dreamed he replied with equal swift- 



50 BRECKIE 

ness but briefly: "J'lcob." (We had lately been telling him of 
Jacob's dream of the angels going up and down the ladder.) 

The third night of my absence, and thereafter, his father took 
care of him at night, but said that he did not awaken at all 
when Mammy brought him in from outside at ten or later. 
At twenty minutes after six, however, he woke up for the day, 
turned over, looked up and said: "Howdy-do, Daddy Dick. 
How you feel ? Baby good." 

Easter Sunday during my absence he had an exceptionally 
happy day. I had left several toy chickens and rabbits for him 
and a set of eggs over which my mother, wrote ''he nearly lost 
his mind." In addition two charming children of about ten 
years old, Eleanor and Marsh, the children of members of the 
faculty at Crescent, shared their Easter eggs, rabbits, and 
chickens with him and let him join in their hunt — putting things 
just ahead of him where they knew he could find them. 

It was during this same absence of mine that Breck startled 
a professor of English from the State University by asking: 
"How is yer, Mr. Jones," and stopped drinking his milk to say 
to his friend B. when she came in his room: "B., kin yer wead?" 
When she replied that she could he continued: "Wead about 
de kittens." This "B" and "Camille," which was Breck's name 
for my husband's private secretary, were among his earliest and 
most devoted friends. 

My father had disposed of some interests he had on a plan- 
tation in eastern Arkansas at just this time and come to stay at 
Crescent, to Breck's manifest satisfaction. It is recorded in one 
of the letters that he asked his grandfather seriously one morning 
at breakfast: "Bobo, have yer got yer clo's on?" 

His memory for people and names was extraordinary. Later 
he was nothing like so observant of people, en masse, and more 
dependent on the few that he loved. But in the early part of 
his third year he knew the faces and first and last names of 
over fifty of the teachers and students at Crescent College, and 
of many people in town to whom he always spoke cordially. 
What makes this remarkable is that he saw very little of them. 
It was rare for him to forget any name or face after an intro- 



BRECKIE 51 

duction. When he was less than two and a half years old his 
father introduced him one day to a stranger named Clarke. 
The next day Breck, walking with Mammy, amazed this gentle- 
man, who reported the incident afterwards, by singing out in 
passing : "Howdy-do, Mr. C'arke." 

Mammy's friends among the colored people were his, and 
her especial friend, whom she called: "Sister Ritchie," he like- 
wise spoke to as : "Sister Witchie." Another pleasant spoken 
colored woman, a very large one, who came to Crescent for 
laundry, he called : "Big Mattie." A tall negro man named Fred 
who drove a wagon was a source of special interest to him. 

When I got back to Eureka Springs from Fort Smith Mammy 
fell ill with lumbago and stayed in bed a week, during which I 
nursed her and took care of Breck with no ill effects. One 
rainy afternoon early in May when Breckinridge and I returned 
from a walk through the dripping woods he carried a present, 
he had gathered himself for Mammy, pressed tight in one moist 
fist. It was a bouquet, consisting of three violets and a nail, and 
when he handed it to Mammy in bed I couldn't determine which 
of the two looked the prouder or more pleased. 



On the night of May twelfth when he was two years and 
four months old Breck made his first inquiry regarding certain 
natural processes in his own body, using nursery phraseology 
of course. So I gave as simple an explanation as I could of the 
kidneys, omitting the bladder as too complicated for purposes 
of illustration then. I showed him where the kidneys were 
located. He already knew what he called his "Lumbar wegion" 
and named it instantly as the place where Mammy had pain 
when she was sick. The cord in the middle of his back he 
called the "pinal column" and often remarked in eating that the 
food went down into his "abdomen." A year later he took real 
interest in following the course of his food after he had eaten 
it, and had a rudimentary but not unscientific general conception 
of the digestive processes. 



52 BRECKIE 

Early in May Breckinridge began again sleeping out all night 
on his balcony, instead of coming in at my bedtime as he did in 
the coldest weather. On the eighteenth, after he had been put 
to bed, he called me out to ask me to kiss his chin. "What is 
the matter with it?" I asked. 

"Baby squatched it wid his fingers. Fingers bad. Fingers 
dangewous." 

A few nights before this when I was out there putting extra 
covering over him he half woke up and spoke sleepily to me. 
At the same moment a bird twittered, 

"Dat's a cat bird," murmured Breck drowsily, closing his eyes 
again. 

When Breckie was out walking with me one afternoon we 
passed a group of school boys playing baseball. His eagerness 
to get in on the game was pathetic and often after that he took 
a stick and tried his best to bat his balls with it. When he heard 
Mammy and me discussing whether or not he needed his sweater 
on going out, he interrupted us to say positively : "He needs his 
ball." That was his real need. 

Upon another occasion he heard me say to her : "Mammy, he 
can't be trusted," and said pleadingly : "Oh, 'et him be twusted." 

Out in the sandpile one Sunday afternoon he was playing with 
Mrs. Tranche's two little daughters, Juliette and Mary Gertrude, 
when he suddenly hugged and kissed the latter, who broke away 
from him and began to run. "Mawy Gertwude," he said, "Baby's 
so'y." 

Another day he was out on the east terrace when he heard 
his grandmother calling to him. Looking up he saw her standing 
at an open window and called back to her anxiously : "Come 
down, Hoho. You will bweak your bones." 

We never let him climb into the window seats and had to be 
mighty careful not to sit there ourselves in his presence. One 
such example from us naturally undid all we might say, since 
he could not see why it would be unsafe for him if not for 
us. Once, at a somewhat later period, he ran in and found me 
sunning my hair in a window seat and cried out : "Boppie, dat's 



BRECKIE 53 

dangewous. Boppie, get down." Needless to add I complied 
with all haste and acknowledgment of wrongdoing. 

On June thirteenth I wrote : "About two weeks ago Breckin- 
ridge asked his first question about God. I had him in my 
arms one Sunday evening and said to him: 'God bless my baby, 
and help him to make himself a good boy.' 

"'Where's God?' asked Breck. 

" 'Everywhere,' I answered vaguely. 'In the blessed moon, in 
baby's head and heart and little feet, in Boppie, in everybody, 
in the four leaf clovers and the little birds.' He appeared deeply 
interested but has not touched upon the subject since. 

"Breck's schedule now is as follows : When he rises in the 
morning he has the juice of two oranges. Later he breakfasts 
in our little private dining room with his father and grandfather 
on a coddled egg and crisp toast. Afterwards he and Mammy 
sally forth for the morning, coming in before noon for his bath. 
Meantime his quart bottle of milk has come and I have pasteur- 
ized it and put it in Walker-Gordon tubes in the upper part of 
his own small refrigerator. After his bath he has one of these 
eight ounce bottles of milk to drink and a cracker or two of his 
own choice, viz: graham, arrowroot or bran, or a piece of zwie- 
back. Then he goes to bed for his nap. When he wakes at 
two or thereabouts he has his dinner, prepared by ourselves, con- 
sisting generally of a bit of rare tenderloin steak, broiled on our 
little broiler, or young chicken, a slice of stale brown bread and 
butter, eight ounces of milk, and a vegetable, often beans or 
greens from our own garden, or asparagus tips, carrots, a baked 
potato, or beet tops. Then he and Mammy spend the balance 
of the afternoon out of doors. They are fond of going with a 
little cup to one of the springs, especially the Grotto, Crescent, 
or Hardin, where they drink any quantity of water. Some- 
times they walk farther afield, or just play about the grounds 
where he has gardening tools, wheel-barrow, sandpile, etc. At 
six they come in and Babekins has a supper of rice and milk, 
or some other cereal and milk, and goes promptly to bed on 
his sleeping porch for the night, — after he has had hands and 



54 BRECKIE 

face washed and often feet, for the dust sifts in through his 
sandals, and has brushed his teeth." 

He loved brushing his teeth and in his fourth year could 
do it so well as to require little of the assistance we necessarily 
were giving in his third. In his fourth year he also learned how 
to gargle his throat expertly. 



In the middle of June Breckinridge was ill with quite a high 
fever and a rash which my mother and Mammy pronounced 
measles, of which there happened to be a few cases in town. 
We will never know what he had because when Dr. Phillips saw 
him the rash had not come out in a definite way and early 
symptoms were not typical, and later, when it had, I could not 
locate the doctor. 

This illness began in the night suddenly with vomiting and a 
high temperature, which in the morning had dropped a little. 
At the same time a small flat eruption appeared on arms, thighs, 
buttocks, back and lower abdomen and slightly on the chest. 
Under appropriate treatment the temperature gradually went 
down, was normal that day and rose the second, failing to go 
down even under treatment. The third morning a splotchy red 
rash appeared on his face and the back of his neck and the 
temperature promptly dropt to nearly a degree subnormal. It 
was subnormal for three successive mornings and did not rise 
above normal again. The rash gradually faded, but Breckie was, 
that rare thing for him, cross and fretful for fully four days 
following this illness. In less than a week, however, he was 
again the joyous^ hearty boy to whom we were accustomed, and 
I find the following note in my journal dated June twenty-sixth : 

"Yesterday afternoon late Dick, Breck and I had a happy 
walk and Breck climbed way up on a high ladder — with Dick 
standing by — and then down again, very smoothly, after a pre- 
liminary puzzling over hands and feet. 

"He always speaks of himself in the third person, sometimes 
climbing into my lap, saying : 'Boppie, pet him.' The other day 



BRECKIE 55 

he fell off a fence he was climbing ;and picked himself up with 
this query to his nurse: 'Mammy, did he hurt himself?' If he is 
interrupted in his play he says : 'Baby's busy.' 

"The other night when I was out on his sleeping porch arrang- 
ing his covers I called his attention to the stars, for the curtains 
of the porch had been let down and it was a bright night. He 
said : 'Dem's Baby's 'ittle stars.' " 

He loved on this balcony at night to listen to the tree frogs 
and katydids, about which he often talked. The myriad sounds 
of a Southern summer night interested and pleased him. The 
wind too became as real a personality to him as to any child 
of a more primitive time. He learned to call the gentle winds 
Zephyr and the rude ones Boreas. On particularly wild nights 
when Boreas was storming all around the balcony Breckie talked 
to him with affectionate familiarity. In lulls we caught snatches 
of his end of the conversation. 

No one who has not slept out of doors alone month in and 
month out as Breckinridge did can appreciate the charm of his 
bedtimes and his awakenings, the dropping off to sleep with the 
drowsy bird notes and rousing to their insistent calls. Grieg 
must have known about it, since he imitated the symphony of the 
birds so extraordinarily well in his Peer Gynt Suite. Breckie 
loved them. The two he observed most at this period, I suppose 
because they are conspicuous, were the red-headed wood-pecker 
and the "old jay." But he could not admire the jay because of 
its quarrelsome disposition. 

I think one reason why Breckie had such a sweet and joyous 
heart was because of his nights out of doors and his matins 
with the birds after the sun had shot its first long rays across 
his opening eyes. I think the winds helped too, "winds austere 
and pure," and the waving boughs of the two tall maples which 
guarded his little crib. 

8 

One day in June Breck came to me asking for a story. I 
reversed the usual procedure by requesting him to tell me one. 



56 BRECKIE 

He began with alacrity and delivered himself of the following, 
which I took down in pencil immediately afterwards : "One day 
'ittle girl walkin' fwough woods and er ole snake bit her patellas 
and her muver had to put black salve on her patellas 'ittle girl 
cwied so one day." 

He was two years and five months old when he told this story, 
his first. The following morning I questioned him further and 
he repeated the tale, but the villain in the piece had evidently 
experienced a change of heart for he added : "But er ole snake 
didn't mean to do it." 

At about this time he had another vivid dream, waking up 
and calling out loudly that he didn't want to be taken by "de lady 
wid de black abdomen." 

9 

That summer was excessively hot and my mother and I often 
longed for the cool sweetness and solitude of her island home, 
the Brackens, in Canadian Muskoka. Our summers for many 
years had nearly all been spent there, but none of us had been 
able to go up since the summer before Breck's birth. 

With the beginning of the extreme heat and the first crowds 
of summer vistors to Eureka Springs my health was not so good 
as it had been and I was often tired, especially after Breck's 
little illness. I gave up working among my flowers and fre- 
quently felt discouraged and ill. But I continued to feel deeply 
the blessedness of my condition with one little child playing by 
me and another next my heart — and now, less than two years 
after, bereft of both, I sit with empty arms in a silent room re- 
calling the promise life held for me then. 

Dated June twenty-seventh I find the following in my journal : 
"In writing I do not often put down the troublous things, the 
every-day annoyances and deeper distresses which I do not want 
to associate indelibly with my life. It is an obligation as well 
as a desire for me to control my thoughts, cultivating wherever 
possible only the sweet and gracious ones. This I owe to those 
around me and particularly to my children, for already I think 
of myself as the mother of children, not just of one child. 



BRECKIE 57 

"But there are inevitable annoyances — though not so many- 
things in my environment annoy as once did. I have learned, 
in my condition, to be grateful, when so many are homeless, for 
shelter, -when nations like Poland and Servia are starving for 
food. I feast my eyes on the beauty of this rugged country 
and shut my ears to the discords of a great crowded house. 
My own apartments are a sanctuary and so is much of the out 
of doors. It has been my privilege to rear my boy through his 
tenderest years in a land at peace, where the right food has 
been available and all he needed of sunshine and air. War and 
the evils of great cities have been far from us and if I am not 
carrying my second child in that dearest of quiet homes, that 
loveliest of islands, 'The Brackens,' I am at least carrying it 
in the fresh air, with pure water, good food, surroundings of 
physical comfort, and — all about me to look at — the 'hills of 
God.' I have flowers to work among, sweet, though not in a 
garden forever my own, and rambling, lonely walks. I have 
books, enough occupation, and no hard work. I have security." 

All these blessings were not to avail in bringing me safely the 
chiefest of all blessings, another little child. The last of June 
Mammy was called home to Fort Smith by the illness of a 
daughter which seemed to be of indefinite duration. It became 
a question of another nurse for Breckinridge and there was only 
one person in that part of Arkansas I was willing to entrust 
with this precious responsibility. Already I had noticed that 
Breck was outgrowing Mammy, whose faithful devotion would 
have tended admirably my second little baby but whose rheumatic 
legs and substantial person could not keep up with a child of 
Breckie's large activity. I felt that he was not free enough. 
Neither she nor I, in my condition, could keep up with him. 

The person I now wanted for his nurse was Juliette Carni, a 
French-Swiss woman with whom I had long been acquainted. 
Breck and I on our walks had often stopped at her house in 
Dairy Hollow to talk, the mutual attraction at first being that 
she came from a country where I had spent two years of happy 
girlhood at school, a country to the memory of which her heart, 
like that of every exiled Swiss, never ceased clinging. 



58 BRECKIE 

Juliette had recently lost her little baby and was anxious to 
nurse another child. I therefore engaged her for Breckinridge 
to whom she was to become a second mother, for the devotion 
between them lasted unbroken to the day of his death. 

It was arranged that Juliette continue sleeping at her home 
where she had a husband and nine-year-old daughter, but come 
to me every morning. Every afternoon Breckie, after his nap 
and dinner, went with her down to the Dairy Hollow to play. 
She brought him back at five thirty, gave him his supper and 
put him to bed. This plan suited us both and she was ready to 
stay at Crescent in the evening should I need her. She had 
every Sunday afternoon at home to herself and later every 
Thursday as well. 

Between Mammy's going and Juliette's coming there were two 
days when I had no nurse and I overtaxed my already depleted 
strength. In addition Breck met with an accident which was an 
awful shock to me. His balcony crib was a model thing of its 
kind, the largest size made, plain iron white enameled, with the 
highest obtainable sides and smooth spindles closely spaced. 
The sides at that time reached up to Breck's chest and it had 
never entered the heads of any of us that he might possibly climb 
over them. This is just what he did, however, and met with a 
terrible fall. When I ran to him, climbing the stairs like the 
wind, he had picked himself up and was sobbing piteously, his 
poor head badly hurt above the eyes. I will never forget the 
look he gave me, it had so much assurance in it that I would 
understand and comfort, as I raised him in my arms. 

Juliette came the next day and he took up with her at once 
in happy fashion, first with that cordial sociability with which 
he greeted everybody and soon in the special way of affectionate 
attachment. This was fortunate for I was soon past helping in 
his care. After I had been five days ill in bed, in spite of 
everything two doctors and a trained nurse could do to prevent 
it, my little daughter Mary was born prematurely at half past 
three in the morning on Saturday the eighth of July, and in 
six hours died. 



BRECKIE 59 

lO 

O little ship that passed us in the night, 
What sunrise wast thou bound for, as we sailed 
Our longer voyage in the wind that wailed, 

Across dark waves with few great stars in sight? 

Or wast thou bound for where, in dim half-light. 
The Isles that None Return From lie thick-veiled 
In their eternal mist ; and shrunk and paled, 

The sun of Ghostland shines from changeless height? 

We had but time to hail and ask her name. 

It sounded faint, like "Persis," and we heard 
"God's haven" as the port from which she came; 

Bound for . . . But in the sobbing of the wind, 
And clash of waves, we failed to catch the word, 
And she was gone; and we were left behind. 

— Eugene Lee-Hamilton. 

She was an exquisite baby with well shaped head, broad brow, 
and eyes set wide apart. Side by side with one of Breckie's 
yellow curls I have yet a lock of her straight brown hair. 

With all the welter of woe in Europe it did not seem like a 
great loss, just one little girl baby. But she was my little girl 
baby, and I had been loving her from the very beginning. For 
nearly seven months I had carried her and now my body felt so 
still since she had left it and my very breasts were to throb for 
lips which could never suckle them. 

From one dark cradle to another with hardly a break between! 
Only six hours — and then she had passed back into the great 
silence from whence she had come. 

I grieved for the life which she had missed, the splendid work 
she might have done, the human motherhood she might not 
know in all its dearness as I knew it. But always through my 
grief there ran that ever-lasting hope of the soul of man, which 
spoke for my darling a continuity of life with possibilities so 
vast that this little episode of birth and death could not really 
matter, except in linking her to me forever, through a mother's 
imperishable love. 



6o . BRECKIE 

After she had died I lay for some time with the precious little 
body, which for months had been so close to me, tight in my arms. 
Then I heard Breckinridge outside and asked to have him 
brought in. When he came to the side of my bed I laid the 
little baby in his arms and said : "This is your little sister." 

Breckinridge looked at me with radiant eyes. "Baby wants 
to see her," he said, trying to remove the handkerchief from her 
face. When he was prevented he petted her proudly. 

Often during the days that followed, after she had been carried 
by her father down to Fort Smith and buried, in our family lot, 
her brother came to my bedside to talk of her. Once I told him 
that perhaps she lived among the stars his loving heart went 
out to every night as he lay on his outdoor bed. He replied, 
with evident recollection of the shrouded, still figure he had 
held: "Baby is goin' to get her and pack her to you, Boppie, and 
unw'ap her and wake her up." 

II 

A few pictures of Breckinridge at this period, while I lay ill 
in bed through long, hot hours, stand out with peculiar vivid- 
ness although I find no record of them in my journal. One is 
of him coming in with Juliette after a visit to Mrs. Jordan, the 
Swiss lady who made his bread, and standing by my bed in a 
pink and white low neck suit without sleeves — yellow hair curl- 
ing tight over his head, eyes very big and blue, — declaring: 
"Boppie, Puts was asleep under de stove." Puts was, so Juliette 
told me, the Jordans' gray cat. 

Another is of his being brought in to me very early in the 
morning by his father, who said : "I asked him what he wanted 
to play with and he said 'Give him a belt,' but it doesn't satisfy 
him long." So then he was left, at my request, that morning 
and subsequent mornings too on my bed until my nurse came in 
to me and Juliette for him. The bed, a large old rosewood one 
with a tester, in which I had sometimes slept as a .girl, made a 
fair sized playroom for him, and I let him ransack the contents 
of my work basket while he sat there by me. It was great fun 



BRECKIE 6i 

for us both and it eased the soreness in my heart to turn from 
the death of my baby to this remaining precious child. 

Breck's curls, of which I have written, were not long ones. 
His hair curled naturally, especially in damp weather or when he 
perspired, in tiny ringlets all over his head. Mammy called them 
"drake's tails." I was careful to cut them back often enough 
to keep him from being bothered with tangles of hot hair on his 
neck. I have seven envelopes of these yellow "drake's tails" for 
I trimmed them back seven times. 

While I was ill Breck began to pick up French from Juliette 
— bits at a time. A friend of mine told me later of his running 
into her house, followed by Juliette, and exclaiming: "Lanky, en 
haut is upstairs and en bas is downstairs." The first rhyme 
he learned was : "Un, deux, trois, nous allons au bois." 

12 

While I lay through these hot days my father, mother and 
husband began planning for my mother and me to take Breckie 
and Juliette and her daughter Liliane and go up to Canada as 
soon as I could travel. It was a wonderful plan. Always I 
seemed, in that hot room, to be hearing "Lake water lapping with 
low sounds by the shore," and at last the old dreams were to 
become again realities. 

I left Eureka Springs Monday, the seventh of August, with 
Juliette, Liliane, and Breck, and with Dick taking us to Seligman 
to put us on the St. Louis sleeper. My mother had gone on 
ahead to do some necessary shopping in Toronto and engage 
another maid. 

We were two nights and a day reaching Toronto, but Breck 
stood the trip well. I had tucked all sorts of new things for 
him to play with in the corners of his suitcase and Juliette pro- 
duced them at intervals, thus enlivening the tedium of the day. 
I remember vividly awaking the first morning an hour or so out 
of St. Louis to find him already awake, sitting up and staring 
hard out of the window at the woods and fields past which we 
were rushing. In fact what woke me was his exclamation : 
"Oh, see de pine comb chees!" 



62 BRECKIE 

Though he stood the trip well it proved too much for my re- 
turning strength and I had to lie over twenty-four hours in 
Toronto at the old Queen's hotel, of which I had always been 
fond because of my grandfather's having stopped there in the 
days of his exile. Juliette took Breck out walking and bought 
him a plaster pig, wearing a Prussian helmet, and sold for 
a Belgian relief fund. We named it "Junker" and it lies in the 
toy box now in far grander company than it ever desei*ved, to wit, 
with the English horse we called after Kitchener and other 
gentlemen. We met my mother at the Queen's and left for 
Muskoka the next day with a maid named Helen, who was to 
become one of Breck's many friends, and with a loved relative, 
my Aunt Jane, who had joined us in Toronto. On the journey 
down we met unexpectedly two favorite cousins from Mississippi 
and through the care of one of them I was able to continue on 
to the Brackens. I had become so very faint and ill that with- 
out his help from the berth in the train tp the boat I could not 
have managed. 

It was several days after we reached the Brackens before 
I could leave my bed upstairs and so I missed the joy I had 
anticipated of being the first to show the wonders of the place 
to Breckinridge. On the twelfth of August I wrote in pencil: 
"I have seen nothing of the islands yet except from the win- 
dows of the North Room, but that little is more beautiful than 
anything I have seen since I last was here. The moon reaches 
a long, silver arm across the lake and through the doors of 
my balcony nearly on to my bed." 

13 

By August eighteenth I was evidently able to be up and in 
swimming, for I find in a letter to my husband of that date 
this account of Breckinridge : "You would have been proud 
of the fearless and eager way in which he first went in the 
water. But he started to run as we were all splashing in the 
bay and fell over on his face. I caught him before his head 
went under all the way, but he got water up his nose. You 



BRECKIE 63 

would have been proud of him again for he hardly cried a mo- 
ment, seemed more shocked than grieved, and almost at once be- 
gan again splashing water. That was two days ago. He has not 
asked to go in since and I have not suggested it. I am waiting 
for the suggestion to come from him as a sign that he is no 
longer frightened. He has a little wooden canoe that was 
Clifton's that he loves." 

He often went in the bay again before the water got too cold 
and never seemed frightened, though the incident referred to 
made him cautious. He said the lake had choked him, and added 
with a charming smile to me: "Boppie, did you pull Bweckin- 
widge out by de hair?" He loved rowing and canoeing of all 
things and in the shallow bay where an upset would not matter 
I often let him sit alone in his bathing suit in one of the smaller 
boats and manipulate the oars or paddle, while I walked along 
in the water close to him. He really handled the oars well and 
I think had boat and oars been adapted to the size of a two and 
a half year old he would have succeeded with them admirably. 
He was never frightened on the water, even in rough weather, 
and no more disturbed when waves dashed over the boat, delug- 
ing him with their spray, than I was myself. When any of us 
started to push off in a boat we could usually hear him calling: 
"Wait for Bweckinwidge." When he went with us in the boats 
he sat on a cushion at the feet of whoever did the steering and 
was perfectly quiet, because we had explained the danger of 
moving in boats, trailing his little canoe by a string, 

14 
We were designedly a small household in the roomy house 
that in other years had ever been full of our kindred and 
friends. Aunt Jane and Eleanor were our only guests this sum- 
mer, and they not really guests of course since they are one 
with us. Lees came up for a few weeks before returning to her 
work in Richmond, but my two brothers, whose fondest associa- 
tions hung about the place, were far away — Carson as assistant 
naval attache at Petrograd and Clifton in training at Platts- 
burg. 



64 BRECKIE 

We turned Clifton's old room into a nursery where Breckie 
slept in a crib we bought in Toronto. I left him in Juliette's care 
at night so that I could sleep later in the morning, but this period 
succeeding my illness was the only part of his life when any 
one but his mother regularly had care of him at night, excepting 
right after he was born. 

I wrote in my journal of our life on the little island: "It is 
simple, it is plain, it is heaven. We live in beauty and breathe 
in health with every breath. We linger on the water and I am 
in it swimming once or twice each day. We wander among the 
rocks and trees, and at night we gather about the lamp before 
the great fire of wood in the stone chimney and read aloud. 

"From the open windows of the North room, which I occupy, 
I overlook that expanse of water over which the northern 
lights play often at night, and now and then I raise my grateful 
eyes to look across this loved spot. From a distance comes the 
voice of my little son at play — but close by me, closer than any 
but the dead can reach, is that other voice of my baby girl. I 
hear it in the lapping of the lake upon the shore, in the wind 
sighing softly in the cedar and hemlock trees ; I feel it in the 
brave sunlight and the wide stretches of water and sky, and in the 
spicy odors of the forest. Perhaps that is why we are affected 
supremely by such things. Perhaps they are the voices of our 
dead, the voices of little children and babies who cannot reach 
us through any other language until we too are free. 

"But I still waken at night and imagine she is a live baby and 
I am nursing her, and Breckinridge (to whom I talk of his little 
sister who has gone to live beyond the stars) has asked me for 
"anuder 'ittle sister" that won't go so far away. Beyond the 
stars ! As if one knew ! She is closer yet. I know it in my 
own 'body where she lived and in my heart that loved her. Some- 
where her destiny is wrought out and my love gives me a claim to 
share it. This is my faith, my hope of immortality." 



BRECKIE 65 

15 

Breckinridge, in constant association with Juliette, soon picked 
up French. On August twenty-seventh I noted : "He is rapidly 
learning an excellent French but mixes the two languages at 
present." Once when I asked him for a message to his father 
he said: "Tell him Bweckinwidge hadidejeuner and some fish;" 
and another time, as he splashed in his bath he said: "Dites-lui 
que le savon est un.papillon (pronounced by B. papiwon) and 
Bweckinwidge is a bon gargon." 

When we passed under a clothes line he exclaimed : "Fegardez 
(meaning regardez) le night gown de Xante Lees!" 

Among the toys which had been Clifton's when he was little 
older than Breckinridge and which we found in the top of the 
boathouse were some soldiers, a fire engine, and a hook and lad- 
der truck. With these soldiers for angels Breckie rehearsed 
Jacob's dream. One morning he said to me that Juliette called his 
angels "des soldats." 

A month later and Breck had ceased to confuse French and 
English and from then on to the end of his four years he was 
equally at home in both. This was what I had expected from 
reading of how early the language centers develop in the brains 
of little children and from remembering how my brother Clifton 
at Breck's age, when we were living in Russia, had a fair nursery 
vocabulary in Russian, English, French, and German. The lit- 
tle Russians with whom I played in those days all spoke two or 
three other languages as readily as their own just from hearing 
them constantly spoken. 

In other respects Breckie continued to develop with that ex- 
traordinary rapidity so characteristic of unhampered babies. At 
this time, and indeed always thereafter, I noticed an intense 
earnestness at play which contrasted strongly with the joyous 
flashes of light illuminating his face in conversation. Nothing 
could exceed the seriousness of his expression when he played — 
a seriousness almost stately in a child whose broad brow and 
deep colored eyes gave him a rather striking appearance at all 
times. Play was the real business of his life — as indeed we now 



66 BRECKIE 

know it to be with the young of all highly developed creatures. 

I recall standing with my sister one day at the Brackens and 
watching Breckie run around the table of our outdoor dining 
room with Liliane in pursuit. His expression was so earnest and 
grave that Lees exclaimed : "No matter what he is doing he looks 
like a senator." 

As soon as he began talking with any on-e the smiles fairly 
chased each other across the face which had responded so seri- 
ously to play. I wrote of a steam launch full of old friends from 
other islands calling one day late in August, and added: "The 
whole party were charmed with Breck, who went up to every- 
body in his cordial way, repeating each name as he shook hands." 
A friend from Virginia who spent a few days with us early 
in September wrote nearly two years later: "I remember him 
as the most perfect blending of all that was beautiful and attrac- 
tive in childhood, with an understanding and poise of mind 
seldom found." 

Breckie's love for the lake grew to be almost as absorbing a 
passion with him as it had been for years with me and he became 
quite fanciful about it and about the sky. Once he said that 
there was another lake up behind the clouds and when on the 
water he often said he was behind the clouds. His mind was 
so full of water that when I asked one day what message I should 
send his father he said: "Tell him to take a baf." 

i6 

On the first of September, fearing the threatened railroad 
strike, Aunt Jane left the Brackens and Eleanor, Juliette, Liliane, 
Breck and I went with her on the big boat as far as the locks 
at Port Carling. Then we walked back through the woods three 
miles or so to a sandy bay about two miles from the Brackens 
where Mr. Bissonette, our old French-Canadian caretaker and 
gardener, met us by appointment with two row boats. 

Meanwhile a terrible wind had arisen and was blowing just 
across our course. I decided Breckie was safer with Mr. 
Bissonette than with me and so put him with Eleanor in Mr. B.'s 



BRECKIE 67 

boat. That left Juliette and me to row the other with Liliane in 
the stern. Juliette had learned to pull a strong oar, which was 
certainly needed on this occasion as the storm fairly raged 
around us and I never had a worse pull. We finally tried tacking 
and made better headway, going against the wind to the shelter 
of an island, then following the line of the island on the lee- 
ward side and finally, having worked considerably to the south 
of the Brackens, coming down with the wind on the last stretch. 
It was an exhausting row but did me no harm and, except for 
blistered hands, I was none the worse next day. Of Breckie's 
conduct we were all immensely proud. He sat at Eleanor's 
feet, deluged often with the spray of waves breaking over the 
boat, but quite unafraid and much interested. 

17 

Many people said that Dick made the best father they ever 
knew. Even when Breck was a very little baby Dick gave him 
any amount of personal attention and the two were uncommonly 
chummy as Breck got older. During that summer at the Brack- 
ens Breck spoke frequently of him. Once when I was telHng 
him good-night he said, almost tearfully and without sugges- 
tions on my part: "Tell faver he wants to sweep (sleep) wif 
him." When I reminded him that father was in Eureka Springs 
he cried out : "O, Boppie, take faver to Hoho's Island." 

One day he began running round and round the big hall and 
when I asked him what he was doing he said : "Wookin for 
faver." He often sent casual messages, some of them unsolicited, 
such as : "Tell him to come to Bweckinwidge." "Tell him he 
(meaning himself) is playing wif soldiers and wagons." "Tell 
him he can wow (row) fast and quick" — which was an over- 
statement of facts. Once he said to Juliette : "Dites a son pere 
de venir vers lui," and once, when he had picked a wild aster, 
he gave it to Juliette saying: "11 veut I'envoyer a son pere." I 
pressed it and enclosed it in my next letter to Dick, where I 
was to find it again long afterwards. 



68 BRECKIE 

i8 

One day late in September when Juliette, Helen, and Liliane 
had all gone to the county fair at Bracebridge, the county 
seat, and I was giving Breck his bath for the first time since 
my illness, I left the water running and he stuck his hand un- 
der the faucet. Instantly he came to me, calling out as he came 
"Boppie, c'est twop (trop) chaud. II s'est bwtile (briile)". He 
got caught in the bushes on another occasion and told me that 
his grandmother's island had "scwatched him." Sometimes as 
he ran up and down he exclaimed: "C'est Beckidge qui court." 
It was not until after his third birthday the following winter that 
he ceased speaking of himself in the third person. 

I have the remembrance of his first impersonations associated 
with the Brackens, of his playing baby, sick soldier, and once 
of his descending the stairs in a fresh white suit below which 
the bloomers showed only a little, and saying to me with a 
shy smile : "It's a 'ittle girl." 

Late in September I wrote his father as follows: "Yesterday 
I took the boy back into the woods behind old Captain Howe's 
hut to the swamp where the tamaracks grow, where the moss is 
deep and red and the rushes are tall. Quantities of spruce grow 
also in this swamp, and tall plants with a bloom like cotton. All 
around the edges of the swamp the deciduous trees were touched 
with yellow yesterday. The boy enjoyed plunging through the 
rushes, taller than his head, and sinking deep in the moss. You 
and I went to this marsh one windy day on our honeymoon and 
took a long walk on the old road off to the left of it. Do 
you remember? 

"Coming back yesterday the lake was entirely calm and the 
air had a wet smell. Breckinridge sat with me and rowed 
with me going over — really quite well. He can propel the boat a 
little, but of course doesn't handle his oars well, nor has he 
great force. His education is progressing — for he is learning 
how to row a boat, to hammer nails in wood, to be steady and 
sure-footed on rocks, to respect deep water and hot stoves, to sit 
still in a boat and why he does it, and many, many other things. 



BRECKIE 69 

He is also becoming, among these Canadians, quite as pro-ally 
in his sympathies as even his parents could wish. He told me 
of a certain bee in the goldenrod that it was a 'dangewous bee — 
a German bee.' 

"He is learning the Twenty-third Psalm and knows about 
half of it. We act it as he learns; then we tell it to the big 
hydrangeas down by the water's edge and they whisper it back 
to us. The grassy slope from the Southern veranda to the 
little bay is a 'green pasture/ the lake a 'still water,' and the 
little path back of the island is a 'path of righteousness.' We 
haven't gotten to the 'valley of the shadow of death' yet and 
I don't know how I shall depict that.* 

"He learns eagerly and easily and it is so jolly to teach him. 
I hope he won't want to learn to read before he is eight years 
old because oculists unite in declaring the eye too unformed be- 
fore eight to use print without risk of eye trouble later. So my 
eyes will have to serve him as long as possible and I will read 
a thousand delicious and noble things to him. I wonder what 
his tastes in literature will be. He accepts willingly enough all 
he is taught now. How wonderful it is to watch a remarkable 
mind in its early development and help in its education ! We 
must be careful not to stifle it, careful to help it to follow its own 
bent, careful to fill it with tender and lofty images, careful to 
have only the best food accessible for it to seize upon. I sup- 
pose the education of a child is difficult chiefly because it is one's 
own education. We can't ram one moral into a child's head 
and live by another, tell it to keep its temper and lose our own. 
The other day Breckinridge struck at me with his open hand. 
I said : 'Breckinridge, does Boppie ever strike you ?' In- 
stantly with his quick catching at the right he threw himself upon 
me declaring in his broken way that he wouldn't strike either. 
How different would the feeling in his heart have been had I 
struck back ! 

"Old Mr. Bissonette is immensely proud of Breckie, says he is 

* (Note — at that point Breckie lost interest and we did not pursue the 
subject further.) 



70 BRECKIE 

the strongest child for his age he ever saw — says he reasons and 
that he never knew a baby to reason before. I don't suppose 
the reason of a baby is brought out as a rule and if it isn't ap- 
pealed to how could it develop? Nothing develops until it is 
used." 

Mr. Bissonette put Breckie through a military drill nearly 
every day, both of them standing upright, facing each other, and 
solemnly going through certain setting up exercises, some of 
which were hard for Breck's plump little person to execute. 

19 

Breckinridge's play room at the Brackens on stormy days was 
the top floor of the launch and boat house, a roomy space, all 
open but sheltered from the wet and full of all sorts of delectable 
things to delight the little boy : old boats and tools and camping 
outfits and, mixed in with them, Clifton's little red wheelbarrow, 
toy boats, tin dishes, soldiers and other pathetic reminders of his 
childhood. Soon, I felt, would Breckie be growing beyond them 
too. But now I know he never will — not that is in the world we 
know of. The old boats and tools and toys lie up there under 
the snow with the frozen lake all about, while the first little 
boy — grown a soldier — prepares to serve his country on a foreign 
shore, and the second — after a death as heroic as the bravest 
soldier's — sleeps under the grasses of a southern grave. 

How Breckie did enjoy that old boathouse and its fascinating 
junk ! Tired of my typewriter, I often left the house, and, 
wrapped in a long waterproof cape I had as a girl in Switzer- 
land, I ran down to the connection between the two islands, 
stepped in the boathouse, and there, at the foot of its stairs, 
close by the slips of water, I stood and called. Instantly Breckie's 
sunny head appeared at the head of the stairs and in his 
gracious voice — a voice whose inflections were the sweetest I ever 
heard — he called back: 

"You can come up here, Boppie. You can." 

In my journal in late October I wrote : "Old Mr. Bissonette is 
usually there (in the boathouse) with Juliette, Liliane, and 
Breck, and he is mending rugs with a long sailcloth needle and 



BRECKIE 71 

worsted and a horny protector in the palm of his hand, instead 
of a thimble, — which is sewing sailor fashion. The occupation 
charms Breckinridge, who adores Mr. Bissonette anyway, and 
he has promptly learned to sew. I have in my work bag a bit of 
lace in which he took his first stitches. Now he can sew a button 
on his shirt or romper, though I have to thread his needles with 
double thread, and fasten his threads when he has finished. 
Last night just before supper he came into the big hall where we 
were sitting around the fire, sat down and sewed on two buttons 
with much gravity. But of course they weren't in the right place 
for buttons and I had to cut them oflf later." He never sewed for 
more than a few moments at a time and I hardly think gave it 
enough attention to strain his eyes. 

His appetite at this time, so I wrote, was stupendous and he 
had gained nearly seven pounds since we came up, weighing 
on the supply boat scales forty pounds — which was a little over 
thirty-eight without his clothes. I never recorded any but his 
naked weight. During the hot weather in Arkansas he had lost 
some of his high color, but it all returned at the Brackens and 
he was a splendid looking child, red-cheeked, hearty, his face 
alight with a succession of radiant smiks except when he engaged 
in the serious business of play. 

He came into the big hall every evening while Juliette was 
getting ready his supper of bread and milk, and usually he rushed 
for Gipsy, our time-honored cat of many summers (the cleanest 
of cats, living on the islands with us and smelling of sweet bal- 
sam and pine) who was generally to be found at that hour dozing 
in a cushioned chair before the liberal fire. Breckinridge mingled 
his yellow curls with Gipsy's sleek, black fur and then grabbed 
him by the middle and, staggering over to me, exclaimed: "Vous 
pouvez avoir ce minet." 

In talking French with him Juliette used only the "vous." 
She said she had found that if one tutoies American children, 
who are not likely to hear the language out of their homes, then 
"lis tutoient tout le monde." So we all used the vous in speak- 
ing to Breck, except Lees, who could never bring herself to say 
"vous" to a baby. 



72 BRECKIE 

A dominant trait in Breckinridge, in possessing which he re- 
sembled his father, was keenness of observation. That autumn 
at the Brackens he learned to know both the Union Jack and the 
Stars and Stripes. There hung a photograph of the U. S. Ala- 
bama, on which Carson once served, by the tall clock in the big 
hall, with an American flag flying from it. The whole thing was 
not particularly vivid or strikingly apparent, and the flag in the 
picture was quite small, but Breckie called my attention to 
it one day by saying: "Fegardez ce dwapeau Amewicain!" 



20 

Breckie learned that summer and autumn many little French 
poems and songs from Juliette's well stored memory, such as : 
"Frere Jacques," "Quand j'etais dans ma chambrette," "Ainsi 
font, font, font, les petites marionettes," "Deux Petits Yeux," 
"L'Ange Guardien," "Enfin nous te tenons, petit, petit oiseau." 
One day he was walking around the island with me when sud- 
denly a bird flew up in the air from close by our feet. Breck 
watched it a moment, then burst out singing: "Enfin nous te 
tenons, petit, petit oiseau." 

He called the bath house the bath tub house. One day he was 
playing on the edge of the little pier, the one for the small boats 
in the bay, with his wooden canoe. I said: "Be careful 
Breckinridge, or you will fall in." He replied : "And if he did 
would you put on your having suit and catch Beckinwidge ?" A 
leisurely mode of rescue, truly! Sometimes he called himself 
"Beckinwidge," then "Bweckinwidge," and occasionally "Beck- 
idge." 

That autumn was an exquisite blending of color and wind, 
spray, frost, and sunlight, on our dear islands of quietness. We 
had several small adventures, which greatly interested Breck. 
Eleanor and I routed out a large creature, too big for a mink, 
which we took to be a fox, one night as we returned in a boat 
from the mainland with the mail. On October fourth I wrote 
to Dick : "Eleanor saw a bear last night swimming over to 'Wis- 
towe.' At first she thought it must be a great dog and it scared 



BRECKIE 73 

her when she perceived what it really was, but the bear was worse 
scared. Breckinridge and I routed a big muskrat out of the 
rushes the other day. B. was excited. A wild duck took a bath 
this morning in the lake right under my window. Not for years 
have I seen the wild creatures as little shy. That is because of 
the comparative scarcity of tourists this summer, I suppose. O, it 
is heavenly quiet, beautiful, — a golden and red glory behind a 
soft haze." 

From other October letters to his father I cull the following 
notes of Breckinridge : 

October 6, 1916. 

"I read your message to him this morning and asked him if 
he didn't want to say something for me to write you. I grieve to 
write that he replied : 'O, he doesn't want to say anyfing.' But 
soon after he seized your letter, held it in front of him and 
read out: 'Cher pere, je vous aime de tout mon coeur.' 

"Eleanor, bless her heart, is making him two suits of clothes, 
which will be two less to buy. She is always making things 
for other people. Between her sewing machine and my type- 
writer there is an incessant racket upstairs all morning. We 
seldom indulge in the luxury of staying out until afternoon, 
except mother, who is improving these exquisite days by sys- 
tematically gardening with Mr. Bissonette. It is so warm these 
last days we can sit out without wraps. In father's last letter he 
said: 'You will be wanting to come back now, for it must be 
doleful on the lakes since everybody left.' Doleful, doleful ! with 
the forest a pageant of color, the air like wine, the sun divine 
in its radiance, the moon in untroubled splendor hallowing each 
night. Now that 'everybody' is gone and the lakes are pre- 
tematurally quiet, more so than I have known them in many 
years, the shy creatures that hid back in what the natives up here 
call 'the bush' are coming out a bit. Even the wild ducks ap- 
proach near us. We are often apt at dusk to meet strange, wild 
things — blessed wild things. At night we have a roaring wood 
fire and 'Anne of Geierstein.' Then we sleep with the lap-lapping 
of the waves against our shores and even the fish (was it Eu- 
ripides who so quaintly called them the 'voiceless children of the 



74 BRECKIE 

deep?' I read of it in the Princess Priscilla's Fortnight), even 
the fish do not rest more tranquilly than we." 

October 8. 

"I have been romping in the pine groves v^^ith your son. As 
I came up to write I saw him running with a stick and heard 
Juliette calling: 'Que faites vous?' To which he replied: 'II 
joue.' It has taken him exactly three months to acquire the 
French language, not indeed a very vast vocabulary, but as good 
in French as in English. I see no difference now between the 
two and he passes from one to the other with equal ease. You 
will revel in him. He will astonish you. In two months the 
difference in his development and conversation is marked." 

October 15. 

"Last night came the post card of the sow and her little ones 
you drew. I showed it to Breckinridge this morning, asking 
him what it was. Your art is natural for he replied at once : *a 

pig. 

"I have just shown him the post card picture of you on horse- 
back with the girls, and I pointed you out. Without a word he 
leaned forward and kissed the picture, then said: 'Beckidge a 
embwasse faver.' " 

Oct. 19. 

"B. enjoyed your card and repeated gleefully: 'Faver calls 
Beckidge young buck!' He says: 'Faver will meet him in St. 
Wouis and take him to de wions and tigers.' " 

21 

In happiness and natural beauty did Breckinridge's opening 
personality continue to expand and on October 22nd he achieved 
a moral victory. I laid aside my preparations for leaving to 
record it in my journal as follows : 

"Last summer once when he needed castor oil he rebelled and 
wept over the dose. I gave it anyway but resolved to see what 
training would do before there came occasion to repeat the dose. 
So I led some of the play to sick soldiers and the way they 



BRECKIE 75 

take their medicine — for I am no pacifist and am lost in wonder 
every day over the way they take their medicine of every kind. 
Breckinridge has often been a sick soldier in the past months 
and has taken his imaginary medicine well. Yesterday morning 
and to-day there were evidences of a slight digestive disturbance 
— so our game had to stand the test of real life as games often 
must. Juliette had prepared Breck when he awoke and he came 
running into my room with a determined face : 

" 'Boppie,' he said, 'have you some medicine for dis sol- 
dier?'" 

He recognized the castor oil and took it without flinching. I 
did not soil the triumph by any external reward, only took his 
hand and said gravely : 'Congratulations, soldier.' " 



22, 

It was time to leave, to take Breckie away from the beautiful 
islands in which his body and soul had both grown larger. On 
Thursday, the nineteenth of October, I had written to my hus- 
band: 

"This will be my last letter. It goes down on to-morrow's 
boat and we follow on the next boat, which is Monday's. Mean- 
while it is storming outside, raging even. The waves break into 
white caps under my windows (and far out across the lake) 
— looking like lovely gulls alighting for an instant on the 
angry water. It will have to be angrier than it is to keep me 
from going for the mail to-night on the chance of a letter from 
you and to post this. I love the lake when it is all tossed about 
like this even more than I love its placidity, and I like to get 
out in a boat and wrestle with it as Jacob did with the angel. 
He said: 'I will not let thee go except thou bless me.' The 
blessing of an angry lake lies in the vigor and buoyancy one gets 
out of it — and those are blessings indeed. 

"But we are leaving. All sorts of farewells from all sorts of 
loved places have been ringing for the past week in my ears. In 
the poignancy of good-bye there is always the dread that it may 
be final and therein lies its sting. Listen to a few examples : 



76 BRECKIE 

" 'For Lochaber no more, Lochaber no more, 
We'll maybe return to Lochaber no more.' 

" 'Some of us will never see you again, loved valley of Vir- 
ginia.' 'Shall I ever forget thee, Jerusalem !' " 

I can't say that Breckie took the parting from his grand- 
mother's dear home as we older people did — but in effect it was 
he who was never to see it again. He had been radiantly happy 
at the Brackens. But then, he was radiantly happy everywhere. 

We left Monday morning, October twenty-third — Helen stay- 
ing behind to help Mr. Bissonette close the house. As our boat 
pushed off from the wharf they both stood waving and Breckie 
waved back at them until we had rounded another island and 
the Brackens, with the golden and red glory of its birches, 
maples, and oaks, and the darkness of its evergreens — with its 
lovely shores silhouetted against the lake's blue and the homey 
smoke rising from its stone chimneys, — passed out of his sight 
forever. 

On our return trip from Canada to Arkansas we stopped off 
for two days and a night at St. Louis, where Dick met us and took 
us to rooms he had engaged at the Planter's — in which were 
fresh flowers. He declared that the sweetest thing Breck had 
learned in his newly acquired French was to answer, when he 
addressed him, "Oui, mon pere." That first afternoon while we 
shopped and Juliette visited two sisters living in St. Louis, Dick 
took Breckie, both overjoyed at being together again, to a toy 
shop and gave him the wholly novel experience of looking the 
place over and choosing what he liked. A diminutive tennis 
racket is the only thing left of several selections. Breckie paid 
for them all himself. 

The next day we took him to a children's photographer, 
who let him play at will in a room full of toys and got several 
natural looking poses. Then we went with him to an orthopedic 
surgeon that I wished to consult because of a tendency he had 
to walk with his toes turned out. He prescribed shoes built 




BRECKIE 
Age Two Years and Nine Months, with His Father 



BRECKIE 77 

up a little on the inner sides, and, after we had ordered them, 
we went out to the zoo. Dick said all along that the chief reason 
he had met us at St. Louis was to take Breckinridge to the 
zoo. But it made no greater impression on him than a stable, 
and lions and tigers not a whit more than horses and cows. For 
some months afterwards he did indeed remember and occasionally 
allude to a certain savage pussy and the way she jumped on a 
shelf to eat her meat, after rolling over and over begging for it. 
And he remembered the monkeys even better and their diet of 
bread, apples, turnips, and carrots. He was interested — but not 
more interested in the marvels of the zoo than in the common- 
place marvels which made up the wonderland of his daily 
life. 

There was a donkey for him at Eureka Springs when we re- 
turned, which his father had bought, and which he bestrode 
on a little saddle that had belonged to Clifton some fifteen 
years before. His grandfather presented blanket and bridle and 
"Peter Pan" (his name was Pete, which suited him, but some 
one ran it into the inappropriate Peter Pan) with his equipment 
became a part of our establishment for a year. Breckie liked 
to ride him occasionally and to lead him now and then, and we 
found him most useful carrying provisions on picnics. But Breck 
tired of him. He was too active and eager a child to be willing 
to remain long on a donkey. A year later, when Breck was 
three years and twenty-two months old, he really ceased to care 
for Peter Pan at all and, as feed was very high, we sold him 
then. But before this happened Breck had learned to handle 
him alone, even at Peter's most rapid gait, with considerable 
ease, to guide him to right or left, to dismount, but not to mount, 
alone. 

During our absence Patch had attached herself permanently 
to my father, who had been taking care of her, and through her 
own choice became his dog. Dr. Phillips' dog, Dixie, followed 
suit and the two little fox terriers were much about. Breckin- 
ridge had a pleasant acquaintance with Dixie, dating back to his 
earliest recollections. I remember once soon after he was two 
years old coming in with him and meeting Dixie standing on a 



78 BRECKIE 

box on the Crescent west veranda, and Breckie's inquiring with 
sweet courtesy : "How do you do, Dixie ? How did you get 
way up dere?" Occasionally when the dogs lay about on the 
floor of our study Breckie would stumble over them and several 
times we heard him exclaim : "Excuse me, Dixie." 

He was always most courteous in his manner — partly, I sup- 
pose, because we never failed to thank him after he had obliged 
us or to preface a request of him with please. Once, several 
months later, when his father had taken something suddenly 
from him, he said : "You didn't say excuse me. You gwabbed." 
In his fourth year he had become quite thoughtful about pulling 
off his glove when he shook hands, pulling out a lady's chair for 
her if one sat with him and his father at breakfast (he wanted 
to do this because he saw his father and grandfather do it) and 
taking off his hat, if it wasn't snug fitting knitted headgear, when 
he spoke to people out of doors. These little things and his 
cordial manner in speaking made him a great favorite with his 
fellow townsmen. When I walked out with him many people 
whom I did not know even by sight sang out "Hello, Breck," to us 
in passing. 

24 

But to revert to the autumn of 1916. A dear young cousin 
had come to study at Crescent, Florence Carson, — a cousin I 
had loved from her earliest childhood on her father's plantation 
in Mississippi. Between her and Breckie that year and the next 
there grew up a happy friendship, so that she is reckoned as one 
of the factors in his life. I remember well a picnic he, she and 
I took one day in November, just after Breck's nap, with the dogs 
and Peter Pan. He was to have other jolly picnics later but this 
happened to be the first since he was old enough to take an active 
part in them. We went to the Oil and Johnson springs on a gray, 
rocky road leading down into Leatherwood valley, and, after we 
had unpacked the provisions carried there on Peter Pan's back 
and tied him, we collected dry wood and built a fire on a rock. 
Breckie helped in gathering the wood, and then lit the fire him- 
self, his hands trembling with eagerness. We broiled a steak. 



BRECKIE 79 

heated some ready cooked string beans and made coffee. Breck 
had his share of the steak and beans, his cup of milk and plenty 
of brown bread and butter. Then he fed the dogs and gave 
the left over salt to the donkey. Afterwards he played in the 
water from the spring as it danced over the stones and added 
another happy day to the bounty mother nature had ever in 
store for him. 

When we first returned to Eureka Springs we found that our 
friends Dr. and Mrs. Phillips had a baby girl, just three days 
old, whose godmother I became and who was given my name. 
Breck and I saw much of her and to him as well as to me she 
brought up the remembrance of another baby we could neither 
of us forget. When she came to spend her first afternoon with 
us he said to his grandmother: "Beckinwidge has a 'ittle baby 
too. God is taking care of Beckinwidge's baby." 

Sometimes, in fact nearly every day, he used to talk after this 
fashion: "Beckinwidge wants his 'ittle sister to play wif him. 
Beckinwidge is going to get a gweat big ladder and go up behind 
ze stars and get his 'ittle sister and bwing her to you, Boppie. 
Beckinwidge is going to wite his 'ittle sister a wetter : Dear Sis- 
ter, come back. Beckinwidge's 'ittle sister is wif God." 

26 

In the reading on Child Welfare, which I had pursued in a 
desultory fashion since before Breck came, I chanced this par- 
ticular autumn upon Herbert Spencer's Education, and I agree 
with Dr. Saleeby that this classic marks an epoch in the personal 
development of any one who first reads it. Much that I had 
been conscious of but dimly in striving to do right by my child be- 
came thereafter luminous as day. I turned the book over to Dick 
who was similarly impressed. 

We found after we had returned from the Brackens that Breck 
thought Germans were dangerous birds — doubtless of the chicken 
hawk variety. He was shooting Germans with a stick gun one 



8o BRECKIE 

day and Juliette noticed he pointed it up into the trees. She 
asked him what he thought Germans were and he repHed 
promptly "des oiseaux." She explained about them and he came 
rushing to me shouting: "Boppie, les Allemands sont des gens 
comme nous." Whereupon I explained as simply as I could 
how in the matter of ideals we differed as widely as if we had 
really been of different species. 

At about this time he said to Juliette, respecting the absence 
for a few days of his father : "Juliette, son pere lui a fait de la 
peine. II est alle sur le gwand twain sans lui." 

One day in November I sang to Breckinridge. "Dormez, 
dormez ma belle, dormez, dormez toujours." 

He had just arisen from his nap and looking at me said dis- 
consolately : "Non, il ne veut pas dormir toujours." 

A negro cook at Crescent named Jennie taught him a song 
she often sang, and the way in which he sang it was like this : 

"Lord, I want more weligion, 
Weligion makes me happy; 
I'm weady for to go — 
Leave dis world ob sowwow, 
Twoubles here below." 

An old verse he liked me to repeat to him in the early morn- 
ing when he climbed into my bed, and which he sometimes re- 
peated himself, ran as follows: 

"Seven o'clock, says nurse at the door, 

Kate lifts not up her drowsy head. 

Eight o'clock, says nurse once more. 

But Kate is still in bed. 

Nine o'clock, says nurse with a frown, 

Kate opens one sleepy eye. 

Ten o'clock and Kate comes down, 

And the sun is in the sky. 

Alas and alas when the day's half done 

Kate's work is just begun." 

He was quick to notice any change in familiar songs and 
rhymes. I used to sing Cadet Rouselle "Que pensez vous de 



BRECKIE 8i 

Cadet Rouselle?" and Breckie corrected me, saying it was "Que 
cwoyez vous de Cadet Wouselle?" 

Juliette had gotten him into the habit of folding his hands at 
night and repeating the verse she taught him of L'Ange Guardien, 
as follows : 

"Veillez sur moi quand je m'eveille, 

Bon ange, puis que Dieu le dit; 
Et chaque nuit quand je someille 

Penchez — vous sur mon petit wit (lit). 
Ayez pitie de ma faiblesse, 

A mes cotes marchez sans cesse. 
Parlez-moi le long du chemin, 

Et, pendant que je vous ecoute, 
De peur que je ne tombe en woute (route), 

Bon ange, donnez-moi la main." 

He recited this with the sweetest inflections, but gradually 
dropped out of the habit of making it a part of his nightly 
routine. 

I now had Breckie again at night, as Juliette went back after 
his bedtime to her little home in the Dairy Hollow. As winter 
set in he began sleeping indoors again in the crib next my bed, 
except for his daily naps which were always taken outside. Of 
course the large windows were wide open in our bedroom at 
night and the atmosphere breezy and cold, but Breck, if he 
happened to wake, always stuck one fat hand out from under his 
covers and said, in a smug voice, as he had evidently been say- 
ing to Juliette : "Prenez sa main." When I had held it for a 
moment he went back to sleep. 

On the few rare occasions when I went out in the evening 
after he had gone to bed my mother or Juliette, or Florence or 
"Camille" would sit in the study next my bedroom with closed 
doors between until I returned, in case Breck should awaken 
and need something. He was never frightened at night, indoors 
or out, but if he awoke he called out from sheer sociability. I 
never left the place in the evening without telling him before 
he went to sleep that I was going and where, and who would be 
sitting near him should he need attention in my absence. This 



82 BRECKIE 

satisfied him and he did not object either to my going or the 
attentions of my substitute if such were needed. 

He still remembered his terrible fall of the previous summer, 
when climbing over the sides of his bed, and when I suggested 
that he might be trusted not to climb over again, because it wasn't 
right, he added: "And he would bweak his bones," which was 
quite evidently a more deterring thought. 

On those afternoons when he woke from his nap and I instead 
of Juliette went out to his balcony to take him up, he said, almost 
invariably: "Boppie, are you going to take care of him?" and 
his face expanded into a pleased smile when I said that I was. 
That his smile was equally as pleased when Juliette went out 
I freely admit. If he woke up a little sooner than usual and she 
or I, as the case might be, questioned him : "Who woke Breckin- 
ridge ?" he generally replied : "It was Boweas" — "C'est Boweas" 
— which indeed was often true. He liked the picture of the 
Sandman by Jessie Wilcox Smith and mingled the Sandman in 
his prattling with Boreas, the stars, the birds, and Jack Frost. 
When he felt sleepy he rubbed his eyes and said that the Sand- 
man was coming. 

27 

Clifton came down from Cornell to be with us at Christmas. 
Breck still remembered a brief visit of his in the early summer 
when he brought the big gun with which he won a sharpshooter's 
medal on the rifle range. Now he had a commission in the 
U. S. Reserves besides one in the military at Cornell and Breck's 
interest in him was unbounded. His pride in being like a sol- 
dier was becoming more and more transmuted with the passing 
months into the sort of courage that had made him take willingly 
the castor oil. We taught him that the military trappings were 
symbolic of that sort of courage — as, at their highest, they are. 

Qifton brought him a jointed wooden dog so plainly of 
the Dachshund variety that we named him "Pilsener." This beast 
promptly took his place among those loved playthings of Breckie's 
which he called his "cweatures." 

My sister Lees was also with us this Christmas, but Carson, 




BRECKIE 
Age Two Years and Ten Months, with His Grandfather, Peter Pan and Dixie 



BRECKIE 83 

off in Europe, had been transferred from the embassy at Petro- 
grad to the post of naval attache for the Scandinavian coun- 
tries and could share only in thought the baby's Christmas. 

We felt that it really was the baby's Christmas, that we 
wouldn't have had the heart to celebrate it otherwise. Breck 
had a tree again and sang very prettily as Juliette had taught 
him : "Voici Noel, O douce nuit." I did not keep a list of his 
presents this year and recall chiefly those still in our posses- 
sion: a climbing monkey and a small iron from Juliette, nine 
pins, a Panama pile driver, a fascinating pair of riding boots 
from my father, a rubber swimming man for his bath, a metal 
donkey from his Swiss friend, Mrs. Jordan, which we named 
"Cadichon" after the donkey in "L'Histoire d'un Ane," and which 
survives to-day though with broken legs, a top, balls, books, and 
from his cousin Foncie a wooden duck which he called Jemima 
Puddleduck after the heroine of the book of that name. 

This year Breckinridge gave a present himself for the first time. 
I asked him if he wouldn't like to give one to his father and the 
idea pleased him immensely. So he took five of the pennies out 
of his bank and we went down town together to a stationer's 
shop where toys were kept. I asked the clerk to put a row of 
things costing only five cents each in front of him and told 
Breck that his pennies would buy any one of those things and to 
choose. He was fascinated with some celluloid creatures such as 
float in baths, but the difficulty lay in taking only one when he 
wanted all. 

"Now, Breckinridge," I said, "decide which you want — the 
swan, or the duck, or the turtle, or the fish." 

One by one he picked them up gravely, saying: "De swan 
and de duck and de turtle and de fish." 

At least he chose the duck and bore it home triumphantly. The 
secret was kept until he presented it to his delighted father, and 
then of course he had it afterwards, loaned by father upon de- 
mand, to play with in his bath. 

Many things at one time or another shared his bath, but per- 
haps the one of most unfailing interest was a metal log cabin 
which had held molasses, given him by the neighbor he called 



84 BRECKIE 

Mrs. "Rosy," and from the chimney of which he could pour the 
water in and out. 

28 

With the approach of the New iear I taught Breckie certain 
Hnes of Tennyson's beginning : 

"Ring out wild bells to the wild sky." 

He delighted in them and in playing that he rang the bells. 
His favorite verse was : 

"Ring in the valiant man and free, 

The larger heart, the kindlier hand — 

Ring out the darkness in the land. 
Ring in the Christ that is to be." 

Once he said that he didn't want darkness to be in the land. 
When he did a generous action I told him his was the larger 
heart, the kindlier hand, and that when he was "bwave like a 
soldier" he became a valiant man and free. 

Soon after New Year's in the space of one week we had the 
onset of three serious illnesses. Juliette fell ill and had to have 
an operation and after that caught the grip, which was followed 
by a severe neuritis. I kept her at Crescent where I could take 
care of her, and her sister Blanche came down from St. Louis 
to help me both with her and with Breck. The night after her 
operation Dick fell down the elevator shaft and when found was 
covered with blood, clammy, almost pulseless, and injured in 
many ways of which the most severe proved to be a badly 
sprained back. Before he could turn himself in bed unassisted 
Breck caught the grip, of which there was much in town, and 
a little in the school, and for several days anxiety for him was 
added to my other cares. He was only sick a few days, but 
looked a bit peaked and pulled down for several weeks after- 
wards. 



FOURTH YEAR 

And Nature the old Nurse took 

The child upon her knee 
Saying, "Here is a story book 

Thy Father hath written for thee.' 



And he wandered away and away 

With Nature the dear old Nurse, 
Who sang him by night and by day 

The rhymes of the universe. 

— Longfellow. 



So busy was I with ill people on Breck's third birthday that 
I did not make any note of it in my journal. My recollection 
is, and Juliette confirms it, that she, my husband, and Breck 
himself were all too down and out for any celebration except 
his presents and that his birthday cake, with its three candles, 
was made by Jennie, presented and eaten on the twenty-third 
of tlie month, which was his father's birthday. Breck's cake was 
a simple sponge, covered with powdered sugar, but Dick had a 
more gorgeous afifair, iced. 

For some days after his illness Breck used to get hungrier 
than his limited convalescent diet could satisfy. One day, walk- 
ing in the woods with Blanche, he said, addressing promiscuously 
any listening birds : 

"Petits oiseaux, Beckinwidge dois vous tuer. II n'aime pas 
vous tuer, petits oiseaux, mais sa mere ne lui donne pas assez a 
manger." 

Several weeks after Breckinridge's attack of the grip had dis- 
appeared he was troubled with a swelling in the glands of the 
neck — cervical adenitis — which had finally to be opened. We 
explained to him. Dr. Phillips and I, that it would hurt, but not 
more than a soldier could endure, and he submitted with only 
a moment's wailing when the scalpel went in. The wound had 
to be dressed and bandaged for several days and Breck's neck 
was exceptionally well swathed. He wore anyway on bitter days 
(pulled up over his knitted cap) a Russian "bashlik" which had 
been mine in St. Petersburg. 



After his third birthday Breck gradually began to speak of 
himself in the first person, with frequent lapses for awhile into 

. 87 



88 BRECKIE 

the third. One day he heard it repeated that a woman had 
whipped her boy, and he said to me : "You wouldn't whip Beck- 
inwidge, would you, Boppie ?" 

And when for reply I caught him in my arms and said : "No, 
my blessing, not Boppie nor anybody else shall ever whip my 
little boy. Boppie thinks that is cruel and wrong. She would 
fight any one who even tried to do it." He gave me a proud 
confident look and never alluded to the subject again. But 
months afterwards when he turned the pages of his Volland 
edition of Mother Goose and came to the illustration of the old 
woman in the shoe he said : 

"She's a bad, wicked woman to whip her little childwen. 
Don't wead about her." 

At about this time he began inventing nonsense sounds, and 
words without any meaning — sometimes, however, using them as 
if they conveyed a meaning to him. We told him he was talking 
polyglot and he used the expression frequently to describe his 
own jargon. Unfortunately I never made a note phonetically 
spelling any of these sounds and do not remember them accu- 
rately. Sometimes he used one in a sentence : "He' s toocha." 
Sometimes he strung a lot of them together without any English 
or French mixed in. He liked to do this, kept it up all through 
his fourth year, and seemed proud of it. 

While Juliette lay ill with us he often ran into her room and, 
climbing upon her bed, made her the sharer, as much as possible, 
of his thoughts and games. We three played "Le Petit Chaperon 
Rouge," Breckie and Juliette tailing turns at being the wolf. She 
was reading a book called "L'Enfant des Bois," when con- 
valescent, with startling pictures in it of an ourang outang, and 
Breckie was full of eager interest over "le gwand singe." 

Towards spring we passed on our walks, near an old stable, 
(where Breckie loved to go because of the friendly horse, the 
cows, and sometimes the sheep we found there) a small boy who 
called himself "W. P." He was a good-natured, agreeable small 
boy several years Breck's senior and inspired in the latter's breast 
a profound though fleeting admiration. At this time when 
Breckie climbed into my bed in the early morning he was apt to 



BRECKIE 89 

say, with an air of stating all things needful, "Dis is W. P." 
He then asked me: "Who is dis?" I invented a name to give 
tone to the game : "Algernon Fitzgerald." Breck pronounced 
it with difficulty but played the game often. 

Later he became fond of being a rabbit called "Bwight Eyes" 
and I was "Bobtail." His father, when present, was "Long 
Ear." Bright Eyes and Bobtail were usually put to it to escape 
the clutches of the fox, the same fox who nearly got Jemima 
Puddleduck and figured in another Peter Rabbit book as Mr. 
Todd. We dived into our holes under the bedclothes, sneaking 
out occasionally to find carrots and then eating them with much 
munching and nibbling. 

When Juliette was able to get up and go about she and Blanche 
went down to her house in the Dairy Hollow and for several 
weeks, while she was recovering her strength, I took care of 
Breckie alone, neglecting the other things I had to do pretty 
much. We often went down to the Dairy Hollow for the after- 
noon and Breckie worked at "piocher" as he and Juliette called 
his attacking of the wintry garden with a pick, or he fed the 
chickens and ducks or piled stove wood on the porch. I re- 
member seeing him poking into the dog kennel with a long stick 
and a moment later here he came running to us, exclaiming: 
"O, Juliette, Queenie a pondu un oeuf ." Sure enough there lay a 
hen's egg on the straw of the dog's bed. Queenie was Juliette's 
dog, very gentle, and Breckie's stanch friend. 

Breckinridge laid claim to many of the live creatures at 
Juliette's place, notably at this time to a black and white duck, 
which unfortunately it became necessary for the Carnis to eat. 
How Breck got wind of it we did not know, but he came run- 
ning to Juliette in tears and saying: "Juliette, vous n'avez pas 
manger mon canard!" He was young enough to be soon con- 
soled with another duck, a brown one with black stripes. 

He learned a little poem this spring which he loved to recite: 

"Petite poule, la blanchette, 
Tu connais la vieille Lison — 
Notre voisine est si pauvre. 
Pond pour elle, c'est la saison. 



90 BRECKIE 

Viens deposer chaque matin 
Un petit oeuf devant sa porte — 
La bonne femme n'est plus forte 
Pour gagner un morceau de pain. 
Petite poule, ecoute encore — 
Le bon Dieu te benira." 

He liked me to recite the rhyme of the Jabberwocky for him, 
and a favorite Mother Goose rhyme of this period was the fol- 
lowing : 

"Leg over leg the dog went to Dover; 
When he came to a stile, jump, he went over." 

A French song which he learned this spring and to which he 
was much attached ran like this: 

"Le petit bossu s'en va au lait, 

II n'y va jamais sans son petit pot. 

Arrive chez la laitiere, 

Tout en faisant ces petites manieres — 

(Here he shook his little body from side to side as Juliette 
had taught him.) 

"Donnez-moi du lait, 
Viola mon petit pot! 
Non, non je n'ai jamais vu 
D'aussi resolu que le petit bossu. 
Non, non je n'ai jamais vu 
D'aussi resolu que le petit bossu. 

"Le petit bossu s'en va au pain, 

II n'y va jamais sans son panier. 

Arrive chez la boulangere, 

Tout en faisant ses petites manieres — 

*Donnez-moi du pain, voila mon panier,' etc. 

"Le petit bossu sans va promener, 

II n'y va jamais sans ses papiers. 

Arrive chez la frontiere. 

Tout en faisant ses petites manieres — 

'Laissez-moi passer, voila mes papiers,' etc." 



BRECKIE 91 



The first of every month that winter and spring we took up 
a collection in the school for the Belgian Babies' relief fund. 
We added to it whatever funds the townspeople cared to con- 
tribute too and did what we could to stimulate such contributions 
by placards, notices in the papers, and an occasional public talk. 
The sum was always a small one (for people had not learned to 
give as they are doing now), made up mostly of nickels, dimes, 
and quarters — but it afforded an outlet for those who either could 
not, or felt that they could not, give much at any one time. 
Liliane gave a little every month and I asked Breckie if he did 
not want to contribute five of his pennies. Naturally enough it 
pleased him and of course meant no sacrifice whatever — not like 
the benefactions of "Mrs. Pardigle's Young Family" in Bleak 
House, over whom I laugh and cry to this day. On the contrary, 
next to putting the pennies in his bank Breck's greatest pleasure 
in saving was to take them out. But I think that he did grasp in 
a young way the thought of other little children like himself 
without cribs, warm milk, mittens and sweaters and things with 
which to play. He grasped too in a dim fashion the responsi- 
bility devolving upon us to give up a measure of our sheltered 
lives to them. He had a generous heart and was ever ready to 
give or share whatever he possessed with any one — if only they 
said please and didn't "gwab." He was a stickler even then 
as to his rights and if he found one of us making use of his pos- 
sessions without his permission he would repeat the same expres- 
sion we made use of in rebuking him : "You didn't ask." But 
sometimes he heaped coals of fire by saying with sweetness : 
"You can have my scissors (or my tway, or my cup) — you can." 
I never knew him, when requested, to refuse an immediate loan of 
anything he had and he always looked pleased and often a bit 
proud in granting the request. 

Breckinridge's savings account began soon after he was born 
with a five dollar gold piece from his Aunt Lees. We gave him 
the pennies that came our way and the ten per cent profits from 
the long distance telephone booth in the institution. That was his 



92 BRECKIE 

income, which was supplemented by an occasional gift from 
grandfather or grandmother. He was not allowed to receive 
money from any one outside the immediate family. He had an 
account at the bank and whenever his savings totaled a dollar he 
went himself with Juliette or me to the bank, carrying his own 
deposit book, and handed both over to the cashier, saying: "Mr. 
McCwowy, here are my pennies." 

He had nearly fifty dollars saved at the time of the first 
Liberty Loan bond sale and bought his own Liberty bond. His 
grandmother presented him with another and, at the second sale, 
his father gave him two more. He had no conception of the 
meaning of any of this, but he did share in the patriotism of us 
all. Little child though he was I protest that he did understand 
that. We talked often to him of his country and told him that, 
next to God, his country had the first claim on him — a claim 
immeasurably greater than his father's and mine. Strangers were 
surprised sometimes when they asked him : "To whom do you 
belong?" to hear his quick response: "To God and my coun- 
twy." 

We told him that he would have to decide for himself when 
he grew older what he wanted to do for a livelihood, and he often 
said that he would be a soldier. This was natural enough con- 
sidering the times we lived in. But I explained to him that being 
a soldier wasn't necessarily, for every man, a calling in itself, 
that he could be something else for every day and still be a sol- 
dier too — so that if his country needed him he could defend 
her. To help him to grasp the idea of what his country was, to 
make the idea tangible, I told him that the trees and ground 
and rocks all about him were a part of his dear land. These he 
knew and loved already, and, though of course he could not love 
his country as he loved us, I believe nevertheless that he wished 
to serve her, and that he knew he was first of all her son. 

As he grew further into his fourth year I sometimes led the 
conversation, when we were alone together, to the subject of 
other duties he owed the nation besides those of defense. Ever 
since I became a trained nurse the question of neglected chil- 
dren had troubled my heart, and after motlierhood came to me 



BRECKIE 93 

the sight of undernourished or misunderstood children was of- 
tentimes intolerable. I did what I could, of course, in my own 
environment, but the thought was ever present with me that in 
rearing Breckinridge I was doing far more than my puny services 
could ever accomplish had I devoted them to nothing but Child 
Welfare. I felt that he, with his larger intellect and heroic cast 
of mind, could get at the causes of things, when he grew up, 
and rectify them. Even his sociability and charm of manner 
would help, so I thought, in bringing facts before others and 
securing co-operation. Where I could only have helped a little 
here and there he, in his manhood a leader of men, would strike 
at the roots of poverty, ignorance, and vice and rescue child- 
hood — sacrificed from countless ages to these three evil gods. 

I began to talk to him about it a little. I sometimes said: 
"Breckinridge, there are little children without beds to sleep 
on, without milk to drink, without trees to play under." At 
once he replied: "I will buy dem beds" — or else: "Boppie, 
buy dem beds." Then I explained that we hadn't but a very 
little money for that — and I often said: "But when you are 
a man, Breckinridge, you will learn how to help the little chil- 
dren and you won't let them be hungry and cold." 

The students at Crescent had a big Christmas tree every year 
for nearly a hundred poor children in the town and adjacent 
country and to this Breck gave some of his toys. But I did not 
tell him the children were poor. I was anxious to avoid even 
a suggestion of condescension — to let him grasp as early as his 
mind could the fact that they were not so responsible for their 
circumstances as were we who permitted such distresses, and 
that the things they lacked should come to them as a right and 
not as a charity. He gave to his guests, his equals. He was too 
young for me to suggest more than that. 

4 

In March there occurred an incident I made use of later in an 
article on "The Child's Point of View." Breckinridge came to 
me one day with my hot water bottle in which he had stuck a 
pin, saying : "See, I can get de water out wifout taking out de 



94 BRECKIE 

stopper." I did not, of course, blame him for this discovery — 
which was an achievement from his point of view — but I knew 
that the logical moment had arrived for explaining to him the 
nature, use, and limitations of hot water bottles, and so I showed 
him how he had spoiled the bottle, which couldn't be used any 
more because it would leak and wet his bed. I further reminded 
him that the only other one we had was metal and he didn't like 
it, but that now he would have to use it since there was no other. 
He understood perfectly and that night, when a cold March wind 
whistled over his bed and I tucked in the metal bottle, he accepted 
it without a protest, remarking only upon how hard he found it. 
Even at three his reason was so well developed that if he under- 
stood a thing, apprehending it as logical, that was nearly always 
enough. 

Of course I do not mean that he did not occasionally fret or 
cry in that disorganized way of the very young. But there was 
always a physiological cause such as fatigue, sleepiness, a de- 
layed dinner, a fall, not getting outdoors promptly — and he 
fretted rarely because we protected his immaturity, and rarely in- 
deed was there any delay or break in the wholesome routine of 
his daily life. When he did cry unreasonably we did not attempt 
explanations, only sought to remedy the cause of his loss of 
self-control. We had learned that an occasional loss of control 
is to be expected, is normal with even the most cherished little 
children, and we were tender with him. If sometimes we failed 
in our endeavor and were impatient we begged his pardon — ^but 
ready as we were to acknowledge ourselves in the wrong we 
couldn't keep pace with him, for a sweeter or more generous 
spirit was never born and his "excuse me — I'm sowy" came 
unsought when he knew he had offended or trampled on the 
rights of others. He never bore a grudge five minutes against 
any one — and indeed had no occasion to, for none wittingly in- 
fringed upon his rights or coerced his will. 

5 
When Juliette had regained her norma, strength she resumed 
the care of her nursling and at about that time moved to an- 



BRECKIE 95 

other cottage across the road from her old one in Dairy Hollow. 
This second home of hers entered into the very fibers of Breckin- 
ridge's life, for he spent nearly every afternoon there and a 
morning now and then. It is a picturesque little house, set in a 
garden behind flowering shrubs and separated from the road by 
a stone wall and picket fence. At the back was a good vege- 
table garden and space to one side for the pigs, chickens, Bel- 
gian hares, and bees which formed part of the establishment. 
There was also a field of corn, and, just outside the property, 
a fragrant pine grove. A wooded mountain rose straight up 
at the back. 

Breck had his own garden plot which he worked and planted 
himself and from which he gathered a few sickly beans and a 
handful of potatoes. Two of the latter were large enough to be 
baked and eaten for his dinner. His pride and delight when he 
brought them back to me in the early autumn fairly irradiated 
his dirty face. He nearly always came in with dirty face and 
hands and, though he had many suits and usually put clean 
ones on twice a day (on arising in the morning and again after 
his bath and nap), he never looked clean very long. He was not 
bothered about his clothes. They were all washable, chosen 
for their comfort primarily, and in summer consisted of only 
underwaist and drawers and a low neck, short-sleeved romper, 
with sandals and socks — which he took off whenever he felt like 
it. So far from interrupting his happy play with reminders of 
soiling or tearing his clothes, I should have been disappointed 
had he stayed clean long at a time, because I should have been 
fearful that he was not as spontaneously active as he might 
have been. 

On the way down to Dairy Hollow by the shortest cut we 
passed through an abandoned park called Auditorium Park. The 
Auditorium had been torn down and the grounds given over to 
cows, except for one bit where stood the car barn, in which 
lodged the funny little street cars that made the tour from the 
station to the top of the mountain nearly every hour in winter 
(except on slippery days) and in summer at twenty-minute inter- 
vals. In this park was the Dairy spring, arranged to come out 



96 BRECKIE 

of a sort of pump, and Breckie rarely passed it without pump- 
ing the handle and ducking his rosy face under the spout for a 
drink. He had a special fondness for the springs, those per- 
petually flowing like the Harding, turned on by a faucet like the 
Grotto, or worked by a pump as is the Dairy, and he loved to stop 
and drink whenever he passed one. 

In addition to the Dairy spring the Auditorium Park held other 
attractions, notably several long ropes terminating in loops or 
knots and swung from the limbs of tall oaks. Breck delighted 
in gripping the knotted end of one of these ropes, taking a run- 
ning start and swinging off into space above where the ground 
sloped off. He had a firm grip and the adventure of the thing 
appealed to him mightily. 

I had constructed for him in the grounds of Crescent College 
near his sand pile a slide, trapeze, swing, see-saw, and jumping 
board. All this apparatus was designed and made by the house- 
man on the place, Joe Morris, himself a father and child lover. 
The slide gave the most pleasure. Breckie sometimes spent 
twenty minutes or more at a time in climbing up the ladder at 
the back of it and then joyously sliding down the polished sur- 
face in front. This apparatus attracted other little children in 
the neighborhood older than Breckie but friendly with him, and 
especially Juliette and Mary Gertrude Franche. In the summer 
when the Crescent was again turned over to a manager and 
became a hotel, the children on the place reveled in all these 
appliances. 

6 

We did not make an end of sickness that year until spring. 
A dear uncle of mine came on a visit and fell ill with a neuritis 
which kepi; him in bed for several weeks. Breck enjoyed running 
into his room once or twice a day or stopping by his bedside for 
the humorous, playful talk with which this great-uncle diverted 
him. His friend Camille was also ill and when she got con- 
valescent I moved her to my apartments, where Breckie climbed 
up on her bed with his toys whenever he was in the house. 
After she had gone home for a few weeks' rest she sent him at 



BRECKIE 97 

Easter a box of rabbits and chickens with one long-tailed roos- 
ter. He played with these happily for a few days and then 
I gathered them up and put them away. Several weeks later he 
suddenly asked for them. 

"Dose fings I had, you know, what Camille sent me — fings wid 
a wooster . . ." he said. After he had played with them again 
they were once more set aside and this time he forgot them and 
it was I who brought them out one day when other more usual 
playthings had palled. Clothespins of two varieties, the more 
unusual kind discovered and presented by his great-uncle, were 
satisfying toys with him this spring. 



When the dandelion season came in March Breckie, who liked 
greens of all kinds, went out every day with Juliette digging 
them. He brought in the leaves and stems for salads for us, 
presenting them proudly with : "Dere, Boppie." Some were 
cooked for his dinner. It pleased him to eat things in the pro- 
viding of which he had had a part. Later in the year he 
frequently supplied his own vegetables, gathering beans or okra 
or greens himself. Sometimes he worked diligently for half an 
hour and then again his interest died out before the task was 
done and he began playing at something else. When the dande- 
lions bloomed he brought me the blossoms, and when many of 
them were just white puff balls in the grass I drew his attention 
to the plant — its leaves such as he had eaten, its yellow flowers he 
had picked, and the flyaway seeds he blew from his hand — 
"souffler la lampe," Juliette said they called it in Switzerland. I 
explained as best I could its life cycle and he listened atten- 
tively. 

He took the liveliest interest in Juliette's setting hens and great 
was his delight when she lifted one and let him see the newly 
hatched chicks. She even put one egg against his ear and let him 
hear the pecking of the little creature about to break its way 
through. This intimate knowledge of the hatching of little 
chicks bred a tenderness in him quite different from the destruc- 



98 BRECKIE 

tive tendencies natural to him until he understood. Only the 
summer before, about the time Juliette first took charge of him, 
when he was two and a half years old, he had rushed at one of 
her newly hatched Brahmas and stamped the life out of it. Then 
when Juliette sat him down at a distance and told him he had 
killed the chick his only reply was : "Let him kill anudder one." 
Upon his return to the house he ran to me with an account 
of the affair — but after I had talked to him earnestly about 
the pain little chickens could suffer and how wrong it was wan- 
tonly to destroy life he was "so'y" and never tried to harm 
another little young creature. 

A few hundred yards beyond the Crescent grounds, to the 
right, a forest began, but just before one reached it stood the 
house of those good neighbors and friends Breck called "Mr. 
and Mrs, Rosy." Their stable had a horse for a weather vane, 
and piles of wood lay against their fence, which nobody minded 
his using to make pig pens, criss cross, if we piled it back again 
carefully. In the woodland further on there was, this spring, 
a thrush's nest low enough for him to see when we tip-toed 
near it. In dark spots under the trees we found toadstools 
and I explained to him how poisonous they were. Hereafter 
he was generally the first to call attention to those we met and 
uproot them with a stick. 

8 

From Saturday, April twenty-eighth, through May fifth of 
nineteen seventeen we put on a big celebration of Child Welfare 
Week in the town. We had motion picture films from Wash- 
ington, magic lantern slides from New York, exhibits of various 
kinds from various places, baby improvement contests, a model 
baby bath, several plays, talks by specialists, lullabys played on 
the organ or sung. Mother Goose rhymes in costume and other 
lighter pieces — all, except the motion picture films, in the Cres- 
cent chapel. We also had special services in the churches and 
the Saturday before began with a parade under the direction of 
the Boy Scouts and a committee of Crescent students. It was 



BRECKIE 99 

really a pretty parade. All the school children in town took 
part in costumes representing the childhood of many nations, 
and the Crescent students went as babies and nursemaids, negro 
mammies and anything else their fancies hit upon. Other people 
took part, many banners with striking mottos were flaunted, and 
the whole thing was headed by Uncle Sam and Columbia in an 
automobile carrying a baby — Dr. Phillips' lovely little daughter, 
my godchild. 

Breckinridge rode in this parade on Peter Pan attended by 
Juliette and me, and I felt in looking at his splendid body and 
brilliant color, his noble head and happy face, as he rode by on 
his donkey that nothing I could ever teach or write or talk on 
Child Welfare would ever make an impression equal to the ap- 
pearance of my little son. I thought: "I am busy with small 
beginnings locally. You will carry on large conclusions nation- 
ally; and even now the best of all I do is through you." 

An incident happened at this parade which both touched and 
amused my mother and me. Breck had never forgotten Mammy. 
A picture of Taylor's Southern Girl and Her Mammy hung over 
his indoor crib and he often said it was Boppie with Mammy. 
She had sent us this spring a big flour sack full of greens from 
her own garden and no one among us enjoyed them more than 
Breck. In the parade his eyes fell upon a Crescent student 
blackened with charcoal, stuffed out with pillows, and dressed 
like an old-fashioned colored nurse. He went up to her at once 
and said with his charming smile : "Fank you Mammy for dose 
gweens." 

Breckie surprised his father one day this spring by announc- 
ing at the breakfast table, when he heard his elders discussing 
honey : "I'm going to have some weal countwy honey." He had 
walked with me out to a farm house to look for it, but it was 
not until late summer that we located honey at a place in town 
where a woman kept a few bee hives. Breckie did enjoy going 
after it with Juliette and bringing it home in the comb. He had 
plum and blueberry, grape and apple jellies also, put up as the 
fruits came in season by Mrs. Jordan and Juliette for his winter 
rations. His dessert at dinner was often a little country honey 



loo BRECKIE 

or home made jelly on his brown bread. He knew very well the 
source of each product, saying that the bees made the honey and 
Juliette the jellies out of fruits and sugar. 

Juliette, Liliane, a neighbor of hers, Breck and I picked lots 
of blueberries when the season came on. He liked to know that 
those he picked were going into his jellies and he was entirely 
trustworthy about not eating them raw. But sometimes he came 
to one or another of us with several berries clutched in his hot 
little palm — offering them. Incidentally we amassed ticks in the 
woods as well as berries and Breckie became fairly expert at 
locating those on his own person. 

In this his fourth year he noticed that his diet differed in 
many ways from ours, but my explanations as to certain things 
not being good for him sufficed. He had never known any 
other way but the quiet serving of his food at regular hours 
and. so ate it without questioning and with a large appetite. One 
day when the strawberries were coming in, as he, Juliette and 
I were walking together up the mountain road the other side of 
Dairy Hollow, he asked us: "Est ce que les fwaises (f raises) 
sont bon pour moi?" That was always his way of putting an 
inquiry about foods he heard discussed but had never tasted : "Is 
dat good for me ?" 

Although of course his diet excluded many things unsuited to 
his years it also included the special dishes that were "good for 
little boys" and he knew that we went to any lengths to secure 
these for him. Did not the hens he personally knew lay his 
morning egg in even the coldest weather when eggs were so 
scarce that grown people went without? Did not Mr. Ripply's 
cows give him a quart bottle of milk every day ? Even his bread, 
made from specially ground flour, was specially baked for him 
because the baker's bread and the hot table breads were "not 
good enough" for him. He helped too in gathering and stringing 
the tenderest of the beans — for such only could make part of his 
dinner. Many were the things to eat "good" for him and he 
took a normal interest in each addition to his dietary. 

His pleasure over the ripe peaches he was allowed this sum- 
mer and the slices of uncooked apple in the autumn — the deli- 



BRECKIE loi 

cious peaches and apples of our Ozark mountains — were only 
equaled by that with which he greeted crisp bacon the first time 
we gave it to him. Juliette occasionally made him little flat tea 
cakes she called "bricelets" — such as I had never seen before 
and made in a special iron Mrs. Jordan had brought from Swit- 
zerland. Breckinridge loved them and when he brought back 
a sack full from the Dairy Hollow to put in the glass jar in th^ 
Milk room he sometimes came to me to tell me Juliette had made 
them for him, adding : "Wasn't dat kind of her ?" 



When the warm weather had definitely settled in and Breckie 
was sleeping outside all night again he got into the trying habit 
of climbing out of bed as soon as he was left alone and of 
making raids on my various possessions, carrying the booty 
back to bed with him to examine at his leisure. Sometimes I 
came up from supper to discover his crib littered with the contents 
of my portfolio or work basket and once, in addition to the usual 
loot, I found two American flags, a dish of prunes, and a raised 
umbrella. I remonstrated, reasoned, explained — but the exuber- 
ance of his spirits was at that stage too strong for reasoning. 
He had learned to let down the sliding side of his outdoor crib, 
so I tried putting him back in the indoor one. But here the sides 
were lower and he climbed over, or else climbed from his crib 
to the top of my chest of drawers — taking everything he found 
there. Back into the outdoor crib I put him, tying up the sliding 
side with a rope. But he was a far more agile youngster now 
than he had been the year before at the time of that disastrous 
fall, and scaled the high sides like a monkey — showing me with 
pride how he got up and over and slid down. 

Not for worlds would I have punished the dauntless spirit 
which was, I felt, going to lead him to lofty heights some day. 
But I racked my brains for some measure of restraint that 
would keep him safe in bed without destroying his initiative. 
I tried tying one wrist with a large, soft handkerchief and the 
other end of the handkerchief to the bars of the bed — slipping 



102 BRECKIE 

out on the balcony as soon as he fell asleep to untie it. But this 
fretted him and prevented his turning about in bed. Finally one 
night just after supper he came darting out onto the east 
veranda clad only in a little low-neck shirt, having removed 
his night drawers before leaving his own apartments. The hall 
leading into these apartments was shut off by a fence and gate, 
made by Clifton on one of his visits, which he could not ordinar- 
ily open — but he had gotten through by taking his little wicker 
chair to the gate and climbing up on it. This last escapade 
stimulated my brain and I sought out Joe Morris who co- 
operated with me perfectly. He made a top for Breckie's tall 
outdoor crib of chicken wire, set in a wooden frame, and fastened 
it securely to the side of the crib next the stone wall of the 
house. When the crib was unoccupied and the sliding outer 
side down, this top lay thrown back against the stone wall, — 
but when Breck had gone to bed and the side was up the 
chicken wire came down like a roof across the top of the crib 
and I fastened it in front with a rope fastener. 

This device was open, airy, easy, cheap, and absolutely effec- 
tive. After that when Breckie was put to bed he and the Teddy 
Bear, who always slept with him, had the range of a generous- 
sized crib and nothing more. Nobody blamed him, nobody was 
displeased — but he learned that the restraint was to stay there 
until he could be trusted to go to bed without it, and that it 
would be a proud day for his mother when he could be so 
honored. As a matter of fact this particular phase of his passed 
in a few weeks and I was glad I had restrained its danger- 
ous aspects without crushing the gallant spirit which because 
of its untrained judgment, and only because of that, had failed 
in reliability. By the end of the summer the chicken wire top 
was no longer in use and it was never needed again. After that, 
though less than four years old by several months, Breck could 
be trusted to stay in his bed whenever put there and his daring 
and initiative had both emerged from that irresponsible period 
unimpaired. 

He liked immensely to receive our congratulations whenever he 
had made a moral triumph — like that of taking the castor oil in 



BRECKIE 103 

his third year. All through his fourth year the occasions for our 
so honoring him were legion and when he knew he had con- 
quered himself, as in the crib episode, he was apt to say: "Con- 
gwatulation me, Boppie. I didn't get out of bed." And, to 
Juliette : "Vous pouvez me feliciter." 



10 

One day early in June, in that delightful mid-school and hotel 
season of our domesticity, Breckie went fishing. I heard Dick 
and my father with others planning the trip to the reservoir and 
suggested to Breck that we go out there too, a little later, and 
fish with them. It was a matter of two miles or more out of 
town and we took Peter Pan, Breckinridge riding him some- 
times and leading him sometimes but oftenest running on ahead 
or lagging behind as he liked to do — while I led the donkey. 
We hitched him just below the big dam and climbed up through 
the bushes, brambles and weeds to the picturesque body of 
water which lay in the hollow of the mountains with the sun- 
light dancing over it. 

When we had passed the dam we followed the shore by a 
narrow path which took us too high above and seemed to lead 
ofif into the hills. While Breck and I were discussing the situa- 
tion — his interest and suggestions quite as fertile as mine — we 
happened to look down and there sat my father by a vast rock, 
fishing placidly while Patch and Dixie ran excitedly about. 
Breck and I called to them. Both dogs at once darted towards 
us, crossing an inlet of the reservoir on a submerged stone em- 
placement, while my father shouted directions to us. We were 
to descend the hill to the very water's edge and follow a trail 
into the woods which came out by his rock. Breckie under- 
stood him as well as I and though descending the hillside through 
its tangle of brambles and weeds meant many lacerations on 
the face, hands, and knees of a person his size he plunged 
through without objection. He rarely objected to anything when 
he knew the reason for it. His eager activity brought him many 
falls and in summer his little unprotected knees were often 



I04 BRECKIE 

scratched and bruised. He always came with his injuries to be 
healed, first: "Kiss it, kiss it." . . . and then suitable applica- 
tions and a sterile dressing. 

We got down to the water's edge on this occasion without 
any large mishap and, following the trail into a bit of woods, 
came out upon the great rock beside which my father sat alone 
— for the others had wandered further on. Patchie and Dixie 
greeted us ecstatically. They were springing about my father 
begging for bits of the raw meat he had as bait. For Breckie 
there followed a thrilling hour. His grandfather gave him a rod, 
reel and all, and with it his first lesson in casting. Breck set 
himself to the business with the extreme gravity he bestowed 
upon all his play-life and of course with no realization of receiv- 
ing his instruction from one of the most experienced fishermen 
in the land. He only knew that "Bobo" was, as always, very 
good to him and I deferred telling him of Bobo's catches, rang- 
ing from the Nipegon to the Gulf in our country, and as far as 
the Arctic circle in Finland in the old world. 

Unfortunately Breck did not catch a fish — but even then it was 
a magic day. In many ways his life ran in an unbroken fairy- 
land — happy outdoor things to do succeeding each other kaleido- 
scopically without his knowing in one moment but that the 
next would reveal yet another wonder more delightfully, more 
peculiarly suited to a little boy's desires than the last. There 
came distressing accidents sometimes. One does not grow 
friends with nature without having to learn many hard things. 
Brambles tear when little hands and knees push through them, 
ticks stick all over a fellow and itch after you pull them out, the 
ground hurts when you tumble and fall against it, and when you 
light a camp fire the match will burn if you don't let go of it 
quick. Wasps and bees sting and a Belgian hare at Juliette's bit 
an inquisitive finger nearly to the bone. But for all that life 
was a wonder tale and its mischances but a part of its dear 
realities. 

Juliette and I especially, his father, grandparents and Camille 
occasionally, were apt in devising new glories for the common 
day. When the hot afternoons were succeeding one another 



BRECKIE 105 

he took off his rompers in the Dairy Hollow and played about 
in his little drawers and underwaist only. A favorite play was 
with a dishpan of water Juliette put on the grass, a hole in the 
ground and a kitchen spoon. He poured water into the ground 
and stirred up the mud. Then he filled and refilled his watering 
pot, sprinkling all around him. Just before his bedtime, at 
Crescent, when he was going to be undressed anyway, I gave 
him the hose to play with and let him water the flowers and 
grass as he had seen "Uncle Bill" do. Nobody minded his getting 
wet or muddy. Was not the body more than raiment? His un- 
hampered little body throve in contact with the kind earth. On 
June twelfth at three years and five months old his weight was 
thirty-four and three-quarter pounds and his height thirty-eight 
and three-quarter inches. 

His observance and remembrance of things seemed to me 
exceptional. One day he and I were about to leave Juliette 
down in the Dairy Hollow and climb back to the Crescent alone 
and we were in a hurry. Juliette asked me if I had ever taken 
the path which began at the edge of a field back of her neighbors 
the Hancocks (whom she and Breckie called 'Ancocks). I had 
not, but Juliette said: "Breckinridge le connait. II pent vous le 
montrer." Breckinridge looked up, interested. "Oui, Boppie," 
he said, "je le peux." 

So we started off, he leading. He passed down the Hollow, 
turned to the right, climbed the sloping field back of the " 'An- 
cocks," and turned immediately into a narrow path tucked away 
in among the trees. On this path, crunchy with its old oak leaves, 
he led and I followed until it had wound over a ravine, which 
it circled, above where a spring dripped down into a barrel much 
frequented by the Dairy Hollow horses and cows. Beyond this 
the path came out into the open road again. 

It was either that day or another at about the same time, for 
I made note of it in my journal in July, that Breckie and I 
were passing the garden back of the little house my father called 
his "shack" and I remarked casually that the beans looked wilted. 

Quite as casually he answered: "Potatoes, not beans " and 

he was right. 



io6 BRECKIE 

He liked, as of course all children do, to help other people 
at their work, and when Juliette was busy putting up fruits and 
vegetables on her half holidays she often got things ready in the 
morning with his assistance. He handed her the peaches and 
tomatoes while she peeled them, helped in stringing and wash- 
ing the beans and in shelling the black-eyed peas. In gathering 
cow peas and string beans he was as particular as a grown 
person. 

When Juliette rinsed out any of his things he liked to wash 
too, using a child's board and standing on a bench we had made 
for him which put him on the proper level at the lavatory in my 
bathroom for performing his ablutions. He had a little shoe 
bag which hung on the closet door just below mine and in 
which he put away his own slippers, sandals, overshoes and 
shoes. A pair of felt bedroom slippers, red and with pussy cats 
around the cuffs at the top, are sticking over the edge of one 
of the compartments of this bag now. When he outgrew his 
clothes we usually gave them to Juliette's nephew, Edouard, 
who had once been to her on a visit and was a year younger than 
Breck. But Juliette and I made a point of asking Breck if he 
would give them and smiling at each other over his ready : "Yes, 
sir." He usually said sir to men and women both. 

II 

He was fond this summer and the next autumn of borrowing 
one of my typewriter brushes and taking it with a cup of water 
out to his sleeping porch or to a window sill and "painting" 
with it by dabbing the water over things with his brush. I 
showed him what he could paint and what not — explaining why 
— and he could generally be counted on not to damage any- 
thing. 

One of his traits was an instant owning up to anything wrong 
he had done. If I said: "Breckie, did you paint father's desk?" 
He replied at once : "Yes, Boppie. Please excuse me." Or 
if I saw the door to the refrigerator in the Milk room left open 
and asked him if he had done it he said : "Yes, sir, I was eating 




BRECKIE IN THE DAIRY HOLLOW 
Age Three and a Half Years 



BRECKIE 107 

pwunes." He knew of course that even prunes were not allowed 
except at the regular meal hours — but it never entered his head 
on those rare occasions when he raided the provisions to attempt 
concealment or denial. He was never punished for it. He knew 
no dealings with his people that were not loving and kind and 
it was not often he grieved them by transgressing the natural 
laws of health and conduct they interpreted to him. When he 
did we showed our distress and sometimes our displeasure, and 
were sorry we could not congratulate him. Then we patiently 
explained again the reasons for things. Gradually, slowly, but 
truly, he became more responsible, more trustworthy, more de- 
sirous of our approbation — and through all this process his in- 
tegrity gleamed like a jewel untarnished. No pitiful need of self- 
defense had ever taught him evasions, no dread of punishment 
bred in him lies. He never obeyed me from fear of me, but 
often, when he could not understand the reason, he obeyed from 
love. Frequently he failed in obedience, but less frequently with 
every passing month. His obvious imperfections were plainly 
the results of his immaturity and in growing older he out- 
distanced them more and more. His virtues were the rather 
splendid ones of honor, courage, reasonableness, sweet temper, 
courtesy — such virtues as respond readily in a child's character 
to patient and honest dealings. 

Breckie's courtesy was one of his marked features — I think 
because we were very polite to him. We did not take things from 
him without a thank you or ask for them without a please. 
When Juliette arrived in the morning and he ran into her arms 
she said : "Comment allez vous, cheri ?" And he replied : "Twes 
bien, merci, et vous meme ?" If he thanked us and we forgot to 
reply "You're welcome" he remarked reproachfully : "You didn't 
say you're welcome." He did not forget to say it when we 
thanked him. 

We noticed this courtesy in its especial contrast to the gen- 
erality of little children coming to the Crescent Hotel in the 
summer. These children in the main lacked the amenities of 
life, even when naturally amiable and thoughtful, as many were — 
as all had it in them to be. Breck had just begun to enjoy com- 



io8 BRECKIE 

panionship in his fourth summer and so we let him play with 
the other children in the grounds when he seemed to wish it. 
I overheard him one day talking over his blocks with a six 
year old boy who had just announced that he would invite him to 
his block house, or some such civility, and I caught the sweet 
tones of Breckie's reply. "Dat would be vewy kind of you." 

One little girl in particular of about Breck's age who was 
left chiefly to the care of a young negro nurse, attracted me 
because her clothes were exquisitely embroidered and her mind, 
as well as I could gather, as undeveloped as a little animal's. 
She was a pretty child with a face full of potential intelligence, 
but her manners were bad, her understanding meager, and her 
only idea of play seemed to be to establish a corner on her own 
possessions. We met her in the sandpile where Breck shared 
generously his trowel, kitchen spoon, and various vessels he 
carried out. The little girl had become the owner of a gay bucket 
and shovel, a sifter and tin shell dishes, upon which she kept 
exclusive control. Breckie continued sharing his belongings and 
I could see that he was puzzled over never being permitted to 
play with the shovel and sifter. Juliette and I watched but said 
nothing. 

One day when Breckie came in off the balcony from his nap he 
found in a window .seat a gay bucket, shovel, sifter, and shell 
dishes. His eyes took the wide open dreamy look I often noticed 
in them when confronted suddenly with a wondrous vision. He 
said nothing. Then he drew nearer the vision, still without 
speaking. Then he reached out his hand and took the handle of 
the shovel. It was real and he uttered this half doubting, half 
ecstatic exclamation : "Juliette, Juliette, c'est a moi cette pelle ?" 

12 

A game the older children played in the long twilight after sup- 
per was Drop the Handkerchief without the kissing features, and 
several youngsters from the neighborhood joined in. Breck was 
considerably younger than the others but they were very good 
about Ictliiig Iiiiii join in, nnd no other word than profound will 



BRECKIE 109 

describe his interest. I kept him up until seven thirty because 
the light and noise prevented his getting to sleep on the balcony 
any earlier. Usually it was his dear friend Camille who finished 
supper first and got in the grounds to relieve Juliette for the 
evening. When I followed I found her with him in happiest com- 
panionship. Breckie was sliding or swinging or climbing as a 
rule. He was not partial to the seesaw after one hard fall, but 
when he did seesaw he generally sang softly : 

"Seesaw, Margewy Daw, 
Johnny shall have a new master. 
He cannot earn but a penny a day 
Because he can't work any faster." 

Or: 

"Seesaw, Jack in de hedge, 

Dis is de way to London Bwidge." 

Sometimes he slid down a grassy bank instead of the made slide. 
He and the little Tranches were almost the only children who 
could play freely in the evening for the rest were generally 
so perishably dressed and so mindful of their clothes that they 
could not slide or climb after supper. But they were very good 
about letting Breck join in with such favorite old games as 
Pussy Wants a Corner played against the oaks, and Drop the 
Handkerchief, which I organized. He really impeded things 
quite a bit, never understanding perfectly the rules of the game — 
which he played with his accustomed gravity. He loved to join in 
singing : 

"A tisket, a tasket, a green and yellow basket — 

I sent a message to my love and on the way I dropped it." 

Nothing could have been greater than his joy over having the 
handkerchief dropped behind him, unless it was the deep serious- 
ness with which he walked around outside the circle when it 
was his turn to drop it and finally laid it on the ground behind 
one of his companions. 

He brought me presents when he came back from his walks in 
the woods or up from the Dairy Hollow — or else he brought 



no BRECKIE 

back old rusty wheels, nails, bits of iron junk, horseshoes or 
sticks for himself. These he took to me at once with a proud : 
"Vegardez, Boppie, ce que j'ai." While they were in bloom he 
constantly came back with flowers : honeysuckle, roses, sweet 
William, snow-on-the-mountain, from Juliette's garden — which 
he presented proudly to either his grandmother or me. Above 
the nosegays his grimy litttle face gleamed with an expression 
some one described as "shining." It could not be said of him 
that he had "Moved about among his race and showed no glorious 
morning face," for the sunlight itself hardly seemed more 
dazzling than his common smiles. 

His delight in mimicry expressed itself this summer in imitat- 
ing the ways of a comical little fuzzy dog named "Dolly," \vfho 
was stopping at Crescent and who, when told to pattycake, 
would perch on her hind legs and clap her fore legs together. 
If any one called her she pattered forward on her hind legs 
with the fore legs bobbing up and down. Breckie often became 
a little dog and when he did his name was "Toto" after the pic- 
ture in a book of his by Anatole France called Nos Enfants — 
which Lees had given him. If we told Toto to pattycake he 
squatted a little and clapped his hands together, and if we called 
him he trotted forward in that ])osition. 

There had stood on the .mantle in my study since before 
Breck was born a charming picture of a two year old baby hold- 
ing a ball. This was Jim, a small l^ritishcr, some six years 
older than Breck, th-e child of my friend hVances J in Sus- 
sex, and my godson. Breckie loved this picture. He often 
talked to it and kissed it and at last he began calling himself 
Jimmie. Soon it came to be understood that Jimmie was a lit- 
tle baby, that he could hardly walk and sometimes cried. But 
Juliette early persuaded him that Jimmie was too good a baby 
to cry much, that he smiled a great deal instead — and so if 
Breckie gave way to tears about anything and she exclaimed : 
"Ou done est Jimmie?" he generally stopped crying to smile and 
reply: "Le voila!" 

But Jimmie's leading characteristic was his tenderness. It got 
to be almost impossible for either Juliette or me to caress 



BRECKIE III 

Breck very much and show him special tenderness without his 
at once beg^inning: "Dis is Jimmie — C'est Jimmie," and nestling 
up to us in the way he thought suitable to a baby, with the re- 
sult that he became Jimmie many times each day. He told me 
that when he was Jimmie I must be "Sheepblossom" — a name 
entirely of his own invention. After that when he said: "Dis is 
Jimmie" to me he added: "Who is dis?" And I always had to 
reply that it was Sheepblossom. I was never Boppie to Jimmie 
and never Sheepblossom to Breckinridge, while to Bright Eyes 
I was always Bobtail. 

Breck called a handkerchief a "hankispuss" and one day he 
said: "Jimmie is so little he can't pwonounce handkispuss. He 
says 'hankiker.' " He liked to mispronounce other words when 
talking as Jimmie and he always explained that Jimmie was too 
little or too young to do anything else. 



14 

During this his fourth summer Breckinridge was on even hap- 
pier terms with the natural forces playing about his outdoor 
crib than ever before. He liked Zephyr, the gentle south wind, 
for all its gentleness, less than Boreas. Sometimes he said : 
"Boweas is my fwiend." They were all his friends — the birds, 
the katydids, the tree frogs, the waving branches of the maples, 
the sun's first rays. The lights way down in the valley, above 
which his balcony hung, mingled as one to his untrained gaze 
with the stars in the sky above him. He became more com- 
panionable than ever with the moon and often talked to me about 
Diana and the boy she had come down to kiss. But when I 
recited : 

"The man in the moon came down too soon, 
And asked his way to Norwich. 
He went by the south and l)urned his mouth 
With eating cold pease porridge" — 

he caught me up at once and said the man wouldn't have burnt 
his mouth if the pease porridge had been cold. 



112 BRECKIE 

"That was a joke, Pidgy darling," I answered, and explained it 
briefly. Afterwards he had me say it sometimes with the por- 
ridge cold and sometimes with it hot — but if we agreed to call 
it cold he explained over again about its being a joke. 

On those rare occasions when any one tried to kiss him, be- 
fore whoever was taking care of him could intervene, he drew 
back, saying: "I am not allowed to kiss stwangers," and when 
asked why he never kissed any one, even his dearest, on the 
mouth, he replied automatically : "Cause it isn't hygienic." 

He knew something of bacterial life for I talked to him about 
the little invisible creatures and the different kinds of harm 
some of them could do. If we asked him why he washed his 
hands before eating he said: "To get off de germs and mi- 
cwobes and bactewia." They were as real to him as flies and he 
liked to question me about them. 

15 

When the eighth of July came around again, the anniversary 
of his only sister's birth and death, Breck was still talking of her 
occasionally — her image kept alive through her mother's per- 
petual remembrance. One of the things I quoted to him some- 
times was that part of Rabindranath Tagore's Crescent Moon 
about the seashore of endless worlds where the children meet 
with shouts and songs and dances. He loved it and often spoke 
of his little sister Mary as being there, dancing with Tidy and 
Camp and Jock. The contemplation of so much jollity naturally 
led him into a wish to share it and sometimes he said he wanted 
to go to the seashore of endless worlds himself, but when I said 
I couldn't stay behind without him he replied either that I must 
go too or that he would come back. 

Since our entry into the war I had become so very busy 
that every hour of the day had to be mapped out pretty much 
into its routine duties and I gave up the long afternoon rambles 
in which I hitherto delighted. Instead on four afternoons a week 
through the summer I met with classes we were organizing for 
the making of surgical dressings. My committee work for the 



BRECKIE 113 

Red Cross nursing service kept me many hours each week at 
the typewriter and the National Organization for PubHc Health 
Nursing, for which I was a state representative in Arkansas, 
took further time. In addition I had planned as a sequel to the 
interest excited among the students during Child WeFfare Week 
a course in Child Welfare for our curriculum the coming winter 
— and to planning it, corresponding about it and reading more 
widely on the subject considerable time was devoted. 

All of this meant giving up much leisure and accustomed oc- 
cupations — but seldom did it involve abandoning one of my 
hours with Breckie. We began and ended each day together and 
throughout the intervening hours our lives constantly interwove. 
When he came in at eleven for his bath and long midday nap 
he ran like a homing bird into the corner of the room I had 
taken for my workshop — where I was the least liable to inter- 
ruption. There I had a large office desk, my files, and on an 
adjacent table, my typewriter, and there it was understood 
Breckie could always come. He loved to rummage in the drawers 
of the desk of the typewriter table, after first getting permission, 
among the brushes, note books, keys, typewriter ribbon boxes, 
rubber bands, clips — all that sort of paraphernalia. Sometimes 
he didn't wait for permission, but if I saw him with my keyrings 
and said : "Breckie, you didn't ask," he put them back in the 
drawer and came to me, requesting politely : "May I please play 
wid your keys?" and then bounded off after them again. 

The typewriter was a frequent source of delight. He enjoyed 
sitting in my lap and playing on the keys, moving the carriage 
back and forth and handling all of the other movable parts. It 
was clearly understood that there was to be no playing with the 
machine in my absence and he rarely transgressed that rule — 
because I had explained to him how easy it was to injure the ma- 
chine. When he did transgress I explained all over again. A 
favorite play was to take my stamps and stamping ink down to 
the floor and stamp my address all over a sheet of paper. 

But the thing he most frequently did on coming in at eleven 
and running to me was to climb in my lap and nestle against me 
with : "Dis is Jimmie. Look at him." Then perhaps he added : "He 



114 BRECKIE 

wants to kiss you," or he would stroke my face with one chubby 
hand, saying : "He is petting you." After we had caressed each 
other for a moment he suddenly became Breckinridge and de- 
manded : "Tell me about Fwed and Lucy and Bumbleton." 

It was during this summer when he was three and a half years 
old that he began to love the continued story. I started one day 
a story about a little boy named Fred, a girl called Lucy and a 
dog — Bumbleton. This story was destined never to have an end. 
The doings of these three creatures pleased him and thereafter 
not only every day but several times a day he demanded fuller 
accounts of them. Long years before with my younger brother 
I had kept up such a sequel — for over seven years — about "Jack 
and Machinery Jim" and I now saw that the age of passionate 
love for continued stories had begun with Breckinridge. 

At first Fred and Lucy did tame every-day things about 
their home and its grounds and at night, out on their balcony with 
the mountains, the lights, the stars, tree frogs and birds, they 
slept in twin beds with Bumbleton lying underneath as Jock had 
lain for Breckie. But gradually they fell upon wilder ways and 
faced sterner realities. In their walks through the woods they 
were frequently beset by savage beasts and had to climb the 
trees to escape. It was than that a fourth character, a big boy 
named Roger, began coming to their rescue in every crucial mo- 
ment, like a medieval knight, always just in the nick of time. The 
usual procedure was for Fred and Lucy, when beset to ex- 
tremities by the savage beasts, to give a loud call like this: 
"Ouououououou" — which was answered almost simultaneously 
by another thundering; "Ououououou" — and here would come 
Roger tearing through the underbrush. Then bang would go 
Roger's big gun, for he was old enough for a real gun, and 
the fiercest of the beasts fell dead. 

Breckie's faith in Roger, his omnipresence and his ability to 
overcome all obstacles was invincible. Roger became his beau 
ideal and my highest praise of him, next to saying "soldier," was 
to call him a Roger boy. I did not neglect to have Roger 
shine in many aspects for the little hero-worshiper. Was there 
a sick horse by the roadside? If Fred and Lucy and Bumbleton 



BRECKIE 115 

couldn't handle the situation Roger always could and did. A 
lost baby ? A man with a broken leg ? Roger, the good Samari- 
tan, intervened if the matter overtaxed the obliging resourceful- 
ness of Fred and Lucy and Bumbleton. In fact to Breckie's 
mind a problem was settled when Roger tackled it. One day I 
had Fred and Lucy and Bumbleton hanging midair on the edge of 
a precipice, unable to climb up or down. But an exit out of 
danger immediately suggested itself to Breckinridge "Here will 
come Woger wid a wope." 

If I began the accustomed adventure like this: "When Fred 
and Lucy and Bumbleton were walking through the forest sud- 
denly they heard a rustling in the sumach bushes and there sprang 
out in front of them four wild pigs" — Breckie gave me an un- 
easy look. 

"Did dey call out 'ouououououou ?' " He asked anxiously. 

"Yes, and then they heard all at once, way off in the 
distance, an answering 'ououououou,' very faint and far off, and 
they knew Roger was coming." 

A look of eager confidence succeeded the anxiety on Breck's 
face and he made little gurgling sounds expressive of relief and 
delight, 

16 

On July eighteenth I wrote in my journal as follows : "Yester- 
day Breckinridge climbed a peach tree over and over. He went 
up several limbs and out on others, handling himself with 
dexterity and grace. 

"Last night he pulled out Cock Robin for me to read for 
his goodnight story — and then answered every query himself, 
as: 

*I, said de wook, 

Wid my little book, 

I'll be de parson.' 

He also brought the Pied Piper of Hamlin to me (the copies of 
both that and of Cock Robin were in our nursery in Washing- 
ton thirty years ago) and turning to Kate Greena way's charm- 
ing pictures began : 



ii6 BRECKIE 

'Wats! Dey fought de dogs and killed de cats. . . .' 

When he turned the leaves he invariably stopped at the picture 
above the Hne 'Little hands clapping and little tongues chatter- 
ing' and said, pointing to the tiniest child in dark green with a 
hood, coming out of a door, 'Dat's de little girl I love.' " 

Other books, special favorites of his in his fourth summer, 
were The Story of Jemima Puddleduck, Mr. Jeremy Fisher, 
Pigling Bland, and Mr. Todd. He did not seem to care quite as 
much for Mr. ]5enjamin Bunny — which was another of the 
series his grandmother had given him. He was fond too of 
Fanchon, in the "Nos En f ants book" of Anatole France and 
of many French rhymes of which he was constantly learning new 
ones with Juliette. One often sung that summer, and which 
he had in a book of French songs Mrs. Jordan gave him, and 
later in two others his godmother sent him and in one I gave 
him, was: "11 ctait une bcrgcrc." Another loved song he sang 
after this fashion : 

"Bon gar^on, commengons notre marche et nos chansons ; 
Bien au pas, marchons has, ne reculons pas." 

He came back from Mrs. Jordan one day and said to me : 
"Boppie, nous chantons 'ne reculons pas' et Madame Jordan 
chante 'n'etourdissons pas.' " 

He had never tired of the first song Juliette ever sang to him, 
"Dormez, petite fille," but she sang it of course: 

"Dormez petit garQon 

Mettez vous au dodo — 

Dodo dodo, bien sage et bien gentil, 

Endormez-vous bientot." 

I heard him once singing it to Teddy, "Dormez, petit ours . . .'* 
He loved to climb into Juliette's lap and be rocked while she 
sang this and often he stayed there until she had sung over most 
of the songs she knew. Sometimes he interrupted her by patting 
her face with his hands, saying: "Juliette, je veux vous cawesser," 
or "Juliette, vous etes si bonne." Occasionally he said to her : 




BRECKIE AXD JULIETTE 



BRKCKIE 117 

"Votre nom est Juliette Carni IJwcckinwid^c I hompson, parceque 
vous prcncz soin de moi ct vous ties dc la famillc." 

1 think that liis favorite ImciuIi rhyincs were three of those 
found in a collection called "Voyez comme on dance," illustrated 
by CJcorpc Delaw and jircfaccd by Madame lulmond Rostand. 
After Lees had made us another brief visit and j^one on to New 
York to study she chose this book for me at Hrentano's, It 
reached us July twenty-third and from that time on was one of 
Breck's prime favorites. I Ic did not care for some of the 
rhymes in it as much as for others, but of the three in c|uestion he 
never tired. They were "C'etait un roi de Sardai^Mie," "]je 
Hon Koi Dagobert," and the Loraine version of "La Legcnde de 
Saint Nicholas," beginning: "lis etaient trois petits enfants qui 
s'en allaient glaner aux champs." When he looked at the 
picture of King Dagobert chased by the rabbit he clnukled and 
said: "C'est Bwight Eyes qui court apwes lui." His preference 
among the three was for the legend of St. Nicholas, the bulrher, 
and the three little children. He fre(iuenlly rejjealed it himself 
and when he came to the [)art where the saint brings the children 
back to life he always stuck out three fat fingers, saying: "ICt le 
Saint etendit twois doights." The speeches of the children he re- 
peated in a voice pitched very high and thin : 

"Lc pwcmicr, flit: 'J'ai bicn tlormi,' 
Lc second rcpondit : 'VA moi aussi — ' 
Lc twoisicme dit : 'Je cwoyais ctrc au pawadis.' " 

Another l)Ook he was fond of in bis fourth year and even be- 
fore was "Slovenly I'eter," of which he had copies in both (ierman 
and English. He knew no German, of course, but the pictures 
in the Cicrman edition are more satisfying. The American edi- 
tion contains a number of added rhymes of which "(^Id Doctor 
Wango Tango" was a favorite with Breck. Another one which 
thrilled him mightily was about "Idle Fritz" and his untimely end 
at the hands of a wolf : 

"A wolf had made that cave his den, 
Fritz never saw the light again." 



ii8 BRECKIE 

After a time Breckie began playing he was a little woolly wolf, 
and then he would promptly ask, nestling back in my arms : "Is 
dis de muvcr woolly wolf?" Usually he continued the play by 
adding: "Muvcr woolly wolf, I had hVitz for my supper. But 
I didn't eat his shoes and his buttons. I spit dem out." 

The story of Pauline and the Matches, in his Struvelpeter, 
made a wholesome impression and he thrilled over the Long 
Red Legged Scissor Man. As a smaller boy once, in his third 
year, he said, jwiiiting down a dark hall, that he saw the Long 
Red Legged Scissor Man down there. So I explained very care- 
fully that the man was only in a book and couldn't get out of 
the book to bother my lamb. 

lie was fond of his Little Pigs book, which had belonged to 
Lees, even in his second year, and in his fourth year he liked 
to act out the story of the three little pigs which built houses 
of straw, wood and bricks. Sometimes he was the pigs and 1 the 
wolf and sometimes he the wolf and I the pigs and he thundered 
"Little pigs, little pigs, let me in, let me in !" while I replied 
defiantly "No, not by the hair of my chinny chin chin !" Often he 
built the pigs' houses with his blocks and we had a real chimney 
through which the wolf climbed down into the pot of boiling 
water where he meets his end. 

He often acted the stories I read to him. Once climbing up 
the steep mountain path from Oil and Johnson springs he pre- 
ceded me with a long stick which he kept thrusting into the roots 
of the trees, quoting from his loved Pied Piper : "Go, said 
de mayor, get long poles — Poke out de nests and block up de 
holes." Then he turned to me with a charming smile and his 
hand outstretched as in the picture while he said : "First, if you 
please, my fousand guilders." 

The Child's Garden of Verse, its pictures and rhymes, afforded 
him pleasure off and on and another favorite was an old 
"Nursery Colored Picture Book" which had belonged to my 
brother Carson before I was born and bore the date of its presen- 
tation — 1880. He liked the tale of "Young Mousie Mouse" and 
the "Farmer's Cheese" and the rhymes about the "Robin Red 
Breast " the same gentle robin who was cold when "the 



BRECKIE 119 

north wind doth blow," who covered the Babes in the Wood with 
leaves and the story of whose sad death as Cock Robin he knew 
by heart. I tried to siiow the continuity of thought running 
through his stories whenever they were linkable, whether we re- 
cited or read or told or played or acted them. He often caught 
at this idea himself. Once, for instance, I was telling him about 
Fred and Lucy and Bumbleton and the yarn, as it spun itself, 
took the shape of having Lucy play with a baby bear and nearly 
get devoured by the mother bear before Roger could save her. 
A little later I '.reck nestled against mc, saying that he was a baby 
bear, and "is dis de muver bear?" I took the cue of course and 
sprang to my part. 

"Muver bear," he went on, "I was fwightened when Lucy 
picked me up." 

"But she wouldn't have hurt you, darling," T replied. "She 
wanted to play with you. 1 didn't know enough not to see she 
wouldn't hurt you." 

"No," he said, pleased, "you fought she would hurt me — but 
she wouldn't have hurt me. You didn't know." 

When we found a real hollow tree not far out of town on the 
Blue Spring road, with a big opening in front for Breckie to get 
in and a little opening at the back, high up, through which I 
could shake hands with him, we often played Mother and i'aby 
Bruin — after we had first poked out the dead leaves in a pre- 
cautionary hunt for possible snakes. 

Several natural histories were among Breck's most prized books 
and in especial one in five large volumes. He kept his books 
on the bottom shelf of one of the bookcases in our study and 
frequently I have seen him go there, pull out one of these natural 
histories, lay it on the floor and begin turning the pages with oc- 
casional comments on the creatures he found. He liked me to 
turn the pages with him and read him their names, giving bits of 
information about them. 

Just at this time he began to love a copy of "The Jungle 
Book" my father had given me in London when I was thirteen 
years old. The story of Rikki Tikki Tavi the mongoose and the 
graphic illustrations fascinated him and later, in the autumn, he 



T20 BRECKIE 

liked parts of the tale of "Mowi'li" and the wolves read to him. 
ikit he never wanted it read through. He grew tired after ten 
or fifteen minutes of it. 

An 'VVrtinir Rackham" and a "Kate Grecnaway Mother 
Goose" were treasure-books — but as I knew the greater part of 
the "Mother Goose" rhymes by heart and Juliette as large a 
number of r>ench nursery rhymes and songs he mostly learned 
these from us direct without the medium of books. Almost from 
the time he was old enough to climb into my bed in the morning 
he demanded rhymes of all sorts, and favorites were: 



and 

and 
and 



"What docs little birdie say 
In his nest at peep of day?" 

"To whit to whit to whec. 
Now will you listen to me? 
Who stole the four eggs 1 laid 
And the nice little nest I made?" 

"Where did you come from. Baby dear?" 

"Three Blind Mice." 



Tn his fourth year, it is true, he grew to prefer Fred and 
Lucy and lUimbleton stories and to play at being Bright Eyes, 
the little woolly wolf, Bruin the cub bear, and Tweet Tweet — a 
baby bird — but he never ceased loving and occasionally demand- 
ing the old verses and songs. He was fond of several rhymes 
from Lewis Carroll's books, especially the "Jabberwocky," and 
"The Walrus and the Carpenter," and "1 sent a message to the 
Fish — " the ending of which plainly left him puzzled, for he 
asked, when 1 first repeated it, "Is dat all?" He liked the song 
beginning: "Good Morning Merry Sunshine," and he sang a 
part of "Tipperary" this summer and the opening bars, and those 
only, of the "Star Spangled Banner." 

He was fond of the story of "The Three Goats Gruff" and of 
acting it out, and of "Punky Dunk so fat, the black and white 
cat." He had once owned goldfish, like those which tempted 
runky Dunk, but he did not care about them, except for want- 



BRECKIE 121 

ing to catch them with his hands, and as they are the most unin- 
teresting creatures on earth to me I suggested that he give them 
to Liliane. So they traveled down to the Dairy Hollow in their 
pretty bowl, where they gave much pleasure to Liliane, who was 
old enough to feed and care for them and not old enough to be 
bored, and where, just lately, they have been eaten by "Edna" — 
the Carnis' large sow. 

One of the poems Breckie loved best was Tennyson's "Sweet 
and Low" — and I think this was partly because of the lovely 
illustration of it by Taylor which stood, framed, on my mantle. 
He frequently, in our half hour before bedtime together, climbed 
up on a chair or his toy box to get it down and then climbed into 
my lap before the fire with it, and, while I repeated the exquisite 
verses for him, his eyes never left the picture. 

Another poem he occasionally asked for after supper is found 
in an English book called "Little Lays for Little Folk," pub- 
lished in 1882, which had been given me in Washington by my 
brother Carson. It is by Lord Houghton and begins : 

"A fair little girl sat under a tree, 

Sewing as long as her eyes could see; 
Then smoothed her work and folded it right, 

And said : 'Dear work ! Good night ! Good night !' 

"Such a number of rooks came over her head, 
Crying 'Caw ! Caw !' on their way to bed : 

She said, as she watched their curious flight, 
'Little black things ! Good night ! Good night !' " 

Breck's father is very fond of the "Message to Garcia" and 
we told Breck about it, and often after that when we asked him 
to do anything we said : "Can you carry this message to Garcia ?" 
Sometimes he came and told us of something he had done or 
could do, involving responsibility, and added: "I took dat mes- 
sage to Garcia." 

One couplet which carried its heroic message to him in easily 
understood words was : 



122 BRECKIE 

"Hurrah for Bobby Bumble ! 

Who never minds a tumble — 
But up he jumps, and rubs his bumps, 

And doesn't even grumble." 



17 

The middle of August I dropped my work of all kinds for 
three days and left Breckie with Juliette while I went out to 
three of the farmers' Chautauquas held in our county by the 
field workers of the Extension Division of the University of 
Arkansas. They were mostly dairy and machinery experts with 
a specialist to talk on Finance, another on Home Economics, and 
a third, the Field Secretary of the Arkansas Public Health Asso- 
ciation, on Public Health. The last two were women with whom 
I was charmed. These workers let me handle the prenatal and 
child welfare subjects with the mothers and talk on the tremen- 
dous good public health nursing could bring to them and their 
little ones. I have always found eager listeners in mothers and 
these were most friendly and interested — but it went to my heart 
that all their devoted and so difficult maternity got them only a 
little on the way towards efficient motherhood — and some of them 
no way at all. I longed to show them how to make children 
healthy and happy with just the resources they had, and when 
each evening I came back to my own bonny boy and put him 
and Teddy to bed in the sweet solitude of his balcony I thought 
the old thought which had first come before his birth: "I do 
so little — but you, you will dispel ignorance — my great man that 
is to be." 

18 

In August Breckie had another dream — another that is which I 
have recorded with the date, for I find written in my journal 
on August seventeenth the following: 

"Last night Breck woke up suddenly out on his balcony and 
called out that he didn't want to be fried. When I ran out to 



BRECKIE 123 

him he said a man wanted to fry him. So I told him he had 
dreamed it and fell to wondering how soon children learn to 
recognize their dreams as such. 

"He spun a top this morning, unassisted, for the first time. 

"Yesterday afternoon, Thursday — Juliette's holiday, — Breck 
and I went to the woods together, he on Peter Pan and wearing 
my hunting horn on a red ribbon around his neck. He was 
looking for the fox in the "Story of Jemima Puddleduck" and 
frequently wound his horn to call up the "fox hound puppies." 
We did not find the fox, but spent interested moments by a 
puddle looking at dragon flies and near an ants' nest watching 
the ants carrying fat grubs from across the road." 

My brother Clifton came to us August eighteenth for a week's 
visit before receiving his new assignment to duty. He had left 
Cornell, of course, as soon as we came into the war and now ap- 
peared before Breckie's dazzled eyes as a second lieutenant in the 
infantry of the Regular army. Breck hung about him worship- 
ing. We have pictures of them taken together on horseback 
one afternoon when Clifton and I were starting off for a ride and 
Breck perched for a moment in front of his uncle, clinging to 
the pommel. 

Another afternoon we all went out in Dick's car to the Sani- 
tarium Lake, put on our bathing suits and had a fine swim. 
Breck wore his bathing suit too and splashed about the edge of 
the water with occasional excursions into the depths on his 
father's shoulders. 

Our friend and physician, Dr. Phillips, had entered the service 
of his country and his wife and baby, Mary Catherine, came to 
visit us at about this time. The baby, just the age mine would 
have been, was too young for a companion for Breck but old 
enough for a very sweet relationship as of brother and sister to 
exist between them. Sometimes he was rough with her — a trick 
he had was of petting her gently on the head and, while she cooed 



124 BRECKIE 

responsively, pushing her suddenly so that she had to sit down 
too abruptly for her comfort. But oftener he behaved towards 
her with chivalrous devotion and kept a watchful eye out to pre- 
vent her picking up and swallowing things. 

Once in a while he forgot and put things in his own mouth — 
such as the end of a stick he was holding, for outdoors he 
nearly always carried a stick. But if I spoke of it he promptly 
took it out and if I asked: "Breckie, what are the only things 
we put in our mouths?" he answered at once: "Fings to eat 
and dwink and toof bwushes." Sometimes I said : "Your 
precious little mouth is too sweet and clean for us to put dirt into 
it" and he agreed, — and also as to the desirability of denying 
entrance to such "germs and micwobes and bactewia" as might 
be harboring in the dirt. 

20 

My journal throughout this late summer and early autumn is 
so crowded with war details and impressions and with bits of 
special work Dick and I were doing individually that I have not 
as many records of Breckinridge as at an earlier period. Under 
date September thirteenth I find recorded, after a sympathetic 
allusion to Russia, home of my early girlhood, the following: 

"I don't write enough of Breck. His life and mine thread in 
and out at every turn, busy as I am and much as he lives in 
the Dairy Hollow with Juliette. The other day he said to me: 
'Boppie, I love you more dan I do stwangers.' 

"He goes to bed at seven, gets up at six-thirty and takes a 
nap of about two hours every day. He is outdoors about twenty 
hours out of the twenty-four. He comes in at eleven for his bath 
and nap, all eager with tales of his explorations and nearly al- 
ways carrying something. Yesterday he had acorns to plant and 
make oak trees, the day before an apple, the day before that 
morning glories and three rusty links of an old chain. He told 
me he was a morning glory and added: 'J^ dois gwimper 
(grimper) sur une palissade.' 

"That evening when he built a more fantastic block house 



BRECKIE 125 

than usual my mother said: 'Breckinridge, that looks like St. 
Basil's cathedral in Moscow,' and it did. But Breck replied: 

" 'But it isn't, Hoho. It's a hide-de-chain house.' We peeped 
through the crevices and sure enough there lay the rusty links 
of the old chain. 

"I must find a Geographic Magazine of last spring, which I 
have packed away with others to keep until I can afford to 
have them bound for Breckinridge, because in it I remember see- 
ing a picture of St. Basil's cathedral. I like when his building 
takes on even a faint resemblance to something greater to find 
and show him a picture of the something greater. The Encyclo- 
paedia Britannica helps out wonderfully in that. Long ago he 
strove to imitate the outlines of Stonehenge and now his light- 
houses and acqueducts bear a real resemblance to those illustrated 
in the Britannica." 

Building with his blocks was a daily joy to Breck, I bought 
a large stout basket to hold them, which he could take up by 
the handle and carry from one room to another — though as the 
blocks accumulated the load got almost too heavy for him to 
lift. He had the large, flat blocks he inherited from our child- 
hood (a quantity of them) and the square ones I bought for him, 
with several smooth pieces of wood of various sizes he had 
picked up and used for roofs. In some were brass headed tacks 
he had hammered in himself with his own tack hammer. All this 
he supplemented sometimes with kindling from the kindling bas- 
ket on the hearth, out of which he made fences or with which he 
built pens, laying them criss-cross as he had seen real log pens, 
and as he had imitated them before with sticks from the wood- 
pile in the woodland back of the "Rosy's house." 

Building with blocks was, like all his play, a serious thing 
to Breck and sometimes he breathed heavily (like a runner) while 
building. But whenever he stopped to discuss his handiwork 
the dancing light of his smiles played over his rosy face. 
Later in the autumn he often said he was making a house to live 
in "and dis, Boppie, is our woom. We have de same woom but 
sepawate beds." 



126 BRECKIE 

On September thirteenth I recorded this incident in my jour- 
nal : "The other day, so Juliette tells me, Breckinridge, who was 
walking backwards, fell and lying prone addressed her thus: 
'Juliette, je devwais (devrais) avoir des yeux par dewwiere 
(derriere). Le bon Dieu devwait me faire encore des yeux 
dewwiere.' " 

He stumbled and fell constantly. His habit was to forge 
ahead with eager curiosity, bent on reaching some desired goal 
and utterly oblivious of the uncertain ground and its loose rocks 
under his feet. I never walked out with him, even in the latter 
part of his fourth year, that he didn't fall down several times. 
He did not cry over these falls unless they hurt exceptionally — 
when he ran to Juliette or me sobbing : "Kiss it — kiss it." 

21 

The summer hotel season came to an end, the manager left, 
and we had our usual brief period of precious domesticity before 
the opening of school. Breck remembered the former students 
by name — although he had seen very little of them except for 
breakfasting in the big dining room with them at his father's 
table. (These two did not make use of our private dining room 
for breakfast in the school season.) Breck's relations with the 
faculty and students were cordial — although his schedule and 
theirs rarely brought him in contact with them — which was much 
better for him. He never noticed that he was observed by many 
in his comings and goings and a real rabbit could hardly have 
been more unconscious of its ego than was the little boy who 
played at being Bright Eyes. 

When Breck's cousin Florence returned in September she 
brought him an alert-looking little black and white toy dog 
with pop eyes which squeaked if one banged on its head. We 
christened it "Toto" and I found it after a few days with the 
head nearly severed from its body. Breckie, when questioned, 
gave just the reply I had expected : "I wanted," he said, "to find 
de squeak." 



BRECKIE 127 



23 

In the latter part of September the western section of Carroll 
county had a fair in the grounds of the Auditorium Park, which 
lasted three days. The first came on a Thursday and Breck 
and I went together. There were the usual stalls of fancy work 
and in them a Child Welfare Exhibit I had sent down, a good 
display of country produce, and cattle and poultry among which 
we recognized some of Henri Carni's Brahmas. His biggest 
Belgian hares were there too. Of course booths had been put up 
all over the grounds for the selling of deadly sweets, the letting 
off of noises, the telling of fortunes, and the shooting at marks. 
Breck and I took in as much as we wanted of everything but 
the food and drinks and made for the merry-go-round, which 
was our prime object in coming. 

Here then into the fairyland of the little child's life appeared 
this wonderful new pleasure. He chose a brown horse and 
climbed up on it without fear. But the thing was slow in 
getting up steam and he got tired sitting there, so we took another 
turn around the familiar grounds and when we came back 
Breck's horse was bestrode by another rider. He tried to explain 
to the big boy on it that it was his — ^but gave it up after a 
moment with his accustomed good nature. Fortunately there was 
one remaining horse unoccupied, a white animal, and Breck 
climbed up on it contentedly. Then the music set up and the 
thing began whirling around with the horse going up and down 
and Breckie sitting upon it entranced, while I stood on the plat- 
form by him. 

The remaining two days of the fair, Friday and Saturday, I 
sent Breckie back for more rides with Juliette and Liliane. He 
repeated slowly : "Amewican childwen call it mewwy-go-wound 
and Fwench childwen call it cawousel (carousel) — Swiss chil- 
dwen too, Boppie." With Jackanapes in mind I told him that 
English children called it "giddy-go-round." His interest in this 
delight of many names grew ; and then, as mysteriously as it had 
come, the wonderful creation of music and motion passed out of 



128 BRECKIE 

his life. But there were always other pleasant things happen- 
ing in this little boy's fairyland. 

The next real event, however, was a tragedy. Dixie and 
Patchie were not Breck's dogs, although Patch had once belonged 
to him. But she had taken up permanently with my father as 
had Dixie, who deserted Dr. Phillips for him. My father paid 
their taxes, fed and fondled them, and they followed him every- 
where — even through the mazes of a Virginia reel when he tried 
to dance it. During his absence from Eureka Springs for a few 
days the taxi drivers told us the dogs went to the station and met 
every train until his return. The two little fox terriers were 
so constantly together that it is not unnatural Breck, strumming 
a piano one day, should have replied to some one who asked 
if he were playing Dixie : 

"No, I'm playing Patchie." 

But Dixie fixed his affections early in October on a bull ter- 
rier belonging to one of our neighbors and her mistress shot 
him with a twenty-two rifle. Fortunately Breck was not by 
and did not see the death agonies of the poor little creature — 
but he was concerned over the whole episode and the feeling it 
aroused, and once or twice he objected to passing by the house 
of the woman who had done the shooting, saying in explanation : 
"She might shoot me." He had probably overheard remarks 
about the dangers to passers-by from guns fired in a town and 
this caused his objection, and I am confident too that he was only 

repeating the comment of others when he said : "If Mrs. X 

had fired in de air she wouldn't have killed Dixie." 

The idea of shooting, which the visits of one of his soldier 
uncles and our daily talk of the progress of the war brought home 
to him, was undoubtedly more indelibly fastened on his mind by 
this household tragedy and he talked about guns, pistols, and 
cannon a great deal. Often he said, playing gun with a stick: 
"I will shoot de Germans." Once he said to me : 

"Dere are some good Germans." 



BRECKIE 129 

"Yes, my blessing," I answered, "there must be some." He 
considered a moment before replying and then said : 

"I will shoot de bad ones only." 

Juliette said that he went over with her the whole ques- 
tion of the treatment of Belgium by Germany. He said: 
"Juliette, c'est parceque le Kaiser n'a pas tenu sa pwomesse. II 
a pwomi aux Beiges qu'il n'allait pas passer dans leur pays, 
mais il est alle la et il a tue leurs femmes et leurs enfants. 
Juliette, je ne suis pas comme le Kaiser. Je tiens mes 
pwomesses." 

When he came in at eleven every morning for his bath, milk, 
and nap, I could hear him climbing the stairs with Juliette and 
his eager voice talking rapidly, supplemented by her interjec- 
tions. 

Breck : "Juliette, quand je sewais gwand je vais tuer le 
Kaiser." 

Juliette : "Vous allez !" 

Breck: (With proud confidence) "Oui. Et je vais tuer des 
lions et des tigres." 

Juliette : "Vraiment !" 

Breck: (Still confidently and proudly) "Oui, je vais." 

He overheard Juliette and Henri talking about the cow for 
which they wanted to save up money that they might buy her, 
and he asked Juliette : 

"Pourquoi ne pouvez-vous pas acheter ga ?" She answered : 

"Parceque je n'ai pas assez d'argent pour acheter une vache, 
et ga coute passablement d'argent." Then he said to her, his 
face all eagerness and glowing with smiles : 

"Et bien, quand je sewais gwand je demandewais mon livre 
de banque a Boppie et nous iwons a la banque chercher I'argent. 
Puis nous iwons vous acheter une vache. Parceque, vous savez, 
Juliette, j'ai beaucoup de pennies." 

He often said to her: "Juliette, quand je sewais gwand 
comme mon pere j'auwais aussi une automobile comme lui, et 
vous n'auwez pas a marcher jusque dans le Daiwy Hollow. Je 
vais vous pwend'e dans mon automobile. Never mind, Juliette, 
vous westewez toujours aupwes de moi." 



I30 BRECKIE 

He talked frequ'^ntly of when he would be a man. Evidently 
he had seen pies and questioned Juliette about them for she said 
he asked her once : "JuWette, quand je sewais gwand vous allez 
mc faire dcs 'pies,' n'est ce pas?" and he seemed quite satisfied 
with her promise that she would. 

ITc liked to be told little incidents of his babyhood which were 
too far back for him to remember, and went about repeating 
with a pleased expression: "When I was a weency, tiny baby 
I called duck 'guck.' " When he told it to Juliette he said: 
"Quand j'ctais un tout petit bcbc. . . ." Sometimes he said to 
mc : "Boppie, don't you 'member when I was a weency tiny baby 
I called duck 'guck ?' " 

When he was only two and a half years old he had seen a 
woman nursing her baby and came to me, trying to tell me about 
it. He never forgot the incident and as he grew older I ex- 
plained to him as well as I could the wonder and beauty of this 
natural function. "Was dere plenty of milk in your bweasts for 
me, Boppie? When I was a little baby?" he used to ask me in his 
fourth year and when I assured him that the supply had never 
failed while he needed it, he looked at me with an indefinable 
expression. It had in it a confidence that all the sources of life 
would be as ready for his needs as that had been, and even a 
partial comprehension of the imperishable bond which united him 
and me. Would the breasts of a woman have ever been anything 
but sacred to him afterwards? I had no fears on tliat score, 
little son, 

24 

His long mid-day naps out on the balcony were wonderfully 
refreshing. By the time they fell due such an early riser as 
Breckie had begun to get sleepy and fretful and, after splashing 
about in his tub, he began calling: "I want my good milk," and 
drank it eagerly. Juliette called his feet in his winter night 
clothes "dcs pattes d'ours," which pleased him immensely as he 
and 'J eddy went out to the Sandman together. 

Two or three times it happened that he did not go to sleep 
and, after he had been out on the balcony an hour, he called to be 



BRECKIE 131 

allowed to come in, saying: "Boweas disturbed me." On one 
of these rare occasions I replied : "But, Breckie, you haven't 
slept. You always come in after you have slept." 

To that he answered: "f sleeped alweady," and began to cry. 
Then I heard him stop and say in his natural voice to Teddy: 
"Boppie oughtn't to leave me out here, ought she, Teddy?" After 
which he replied in a small, high voice, intended for Teddy : "No, 
sir," and then resumed his wailing to come in. 

I went out and said : "Teddy, won't you go to sleep like a 
good little bear?" 

Again came the small, high voice adjudged suitable for Teddy: 
"No, sir — " after which Breckie replied in his natural tones : 
"He say he won't do it." 

Breck loved mimicry and always spoke for a creature in- 
capable of speaking for itself. If he had out Fanchon, Kitchener, 
Cadichon, Junker, or any of his "cweatures" and one of us 
addressed a remark to one of them Breck replied at once in the 
small, high voice he assumed they would use and kept up their 
end of the conversation. 

He was fond of teasing now and then. I was ordering Juliette 
some new aprons and Breckie said to her : "Juliette, je vais 
vous acheter des tabliers noirs." Then, after she had exclaimed 
over not wanting black aprons, he chuckled and said: "C'est 
pour wire seulement que je dis ga," and again "c'est pour vous 
chicaner." 

The colors I preferred for him, because of his fair skin and 
vivid coloring, were blue and dark green — but Juliette had set 
her heart on his having a red dressing gown and slippers this 
winter, and Breckie heard her persuading me to order them. I 
was demurring, preferring to duplicate the light blue ones he had 
outgrown. He decided the matter by throwing in his vote with 
Juliette, thus bringing a majority against me, and he said to her : 
"II faut que Boppie achete quelquefois ce que vous pwefewez, 
Juliette." 

When the red wrapper had come he said to her sometimes, as 
she put it on him: "Juliette, Boppie n'aime pas ga, mais il faut 



132 BRECKIE 

que Boppe achete aussi des choses que vols aimiez." — That red 
wrapper — it is hanging now by my closet door. 

Among his bibs were several feather-stitched in red and sev- 
eral in blue sent him by the mother of one of our "old girls." 
I preferred the blue and Juliette the red ones. He appeared 
indifferent, for his own preferences lay with a bib which had a 
goose embroidered on it and another with little bears. But some- 
times he pulled out a blue feather-stitched bib to wear, saying 
it was because I liked it, and again a red feather-stitched one, 
telling Juliette: "Maintenant je vais porter la bavette wouge 
pour vous faire plaisir." 

Some of his suits were middy blouses and when he saw me 
dressed for a mountain tramp in tweed skirt and middy blouse 
he usually wanted to wear one of his middy blouses, if he didn't 
already have one on. He was delighted when I bought him a 
pair of Ground Gripper shoes like mine. His shoes and sandals 
wore out even before he outgrew them, so rocky is the Ozark 
country and so constant in their travels over it were his little 
feet. 

25 

Early in October Breck's father went to Washington for a few 
days on business connected with the State Highway Commis- 
sion. He had intended getting Breck a train and tracks while 
he was up there — for Breckie had been wanting them since early 
in the summer when he saw another child playing with them. 
But his father was hurried in transacting his business and getting 
back, so all he handed Breck on his return was a corkscrew — 
which he pulled out of his suitcase. However, this gave pleasure 
to a child as easily pleased as Breck, especially as he had not 
known of his father's intention to return with the train and 
tracks. He was therefore all the more surprised when Dick 
brought back a train and tracks from downtown the next day 
and presented them to him. But his enjoyment of them was 
short lived. Like many modern toys they seemed made to fall 
apart. The tracks were so bent by Mary Phillips's baby fingers 



BRECKIE 133 

the first day as to be unusable and the train soon broke into many 
tin pieces. 

Jack Frost as a character took the same personal hold on 
Breckinridge's imagination as did Boreas, though much less 
known and less loved. Still Breckie liked to see him on the 
roof in the early morning and snuggled down under his covers 
at night when Jack Frost was abroad in the land. He came this 
year early in October and I find the following record in my 
journal, dated October ninth, which begins with a reference to 
him and proceeds with an account of Breck's first notable draw- 
ing: 

"This morning Breckinridge and I ran out to tell 'Uncle Bill' 
to be sure to cut the tops off the sweet potatoes — because they 
had frosted. Afterwards we went over to the bit of concrete 
sidewalk in front of Dr. Ellis's house for Breck to use a piece 
of chalk Camille had given him. I suggested he draw a circle — 
but the resultant object was rather angular and had two horns 
at an upper end and one leg at a lower. So I said : 

" 'Breckinridge, if you add another leg and a tail to that you 
will have a cow.' 

"Very gravely he added the other leg and a long tail — then 
stood off and surveyed his work. Whereupon without a word 
he promptly drew two more legs. This followed exactly what 
I had read about the drawings of little children never being in 
profile, or if in profile showing all the legs just the same. 

"Then Breck surveyed his work again and announced: 'I 
must put a head on dat cow.' So he drew a roundness in behind 
the horns, put a dot in it and said that was the eye. After that 
he stood off and looked some more, thus discovering another 
omission : 'She must have a bag for de milk.* 

"So he drew one in the right place, looked at it and said : 
'Dere have to be buttons on dat bag,' whereupon he added the 
teats, — then danced about the completed whole, exclaiming : 'See 
dat cow !' 

"Of course it was on a large scale and he could never have 
done it on paper — but how I wi.sh I could keep it. Greatly re- 
duced it looked somewhat like this — but more angular. . . ." 



134 BRECKIE 

(Here follows a tracing from the drawing made in my journal, 
which was copied as exactly as I could do it from the original 
drawing done in chalk by Breckinridge on the square of concrete 
sidewalk.) 




26 

Breckie's friend, Camille, breakfasted with him and his father 
every morning and usually kept him with her a few minutes 
afterwards before bringing him up to Juliette or me. Breck 
enjoyed the excursions he made with her into his father's offices 
or the college chapel where he delighted in playing on the pipe 
organ. It gave forth a much more bewildering rangQ of sound 
than a strummed piano, when Breck climbed up on the long 
bench, touched the electric button, and alternately pressed the 
keys or pulled out the stops. The pedal tones were of course 
beyond the reach of his little feet. 

In the school supply room, when Breck visited there, his father 
and Camille showed him over and over the different pieces of 
money in the cash drawers and he had learned them all by 
name from pennies to dollars — but not the value of course of any 
of them. A favorite reply of his in games, when asked the price 
of anything, was "a dollar and a quart," although he did not 
stick exclusively to the one figure by any means. When he came 
upstairs to get ready for outdoors he climbed up on his bench 
in front of the lavatory and washed the "germs and micwobes 
and bactewia" from the money off his hands. 

Camille sometimes told me the things he said at breakfast 
and afterwards. Once he said to her: "Camille, I have eaten 
my calowies (calories), have you?" Now as no one had ever 



BRECKIE 135 

used the word calorie directly in speaking to him he must have 
gathered not only the word but a connection between it and 
food from overhearing a conversation, probably with the dietician 
and some other person interested in food values. 

I was talking with the dietician one day about the Binet- 
Simon scale — in my study where Breckie, just up from his nap 
and waiting for his dinner, was playing with some of his be- 
longings on the rug. We had been speaking of one of the seven 
year tests — that one which consists in handing the subject a 
picture lacking eyes, nose, mouth or arms, to see if he can detect 
the defect. 

I said that I believed an intelligent child of less than four, like 
Breck, could pass that seven-year-old test — basing the belief on 
the fact that the children of the professional and university 
classes habitually test about two years older mentally with the 
scale than equally normal children less advantageously situated, 
and upon Breck's having passed easily in his third year the three 
and four-year-old tests. 

I didn't have a picture at hand lacking mouth or nose but I 
suddenly thought of "Alice in Wonderland" and pulled the dear 
old volume down off its shelf, opening at the picture heading the 
"Pool of Tears" chapter, where Alice has the long telescopic 
neck. I then called Breck over to my chair. 

"Breckinridge," I said, "this is Alice. Does she look like other 
little girls ?" 

He looked at the picture doubtfully and indicated that she 
didn't. 

"What part of her is different ?" I asked him. 

He seemed at a loss for the words in which to reply, looking 
from me to the picture. Then I said: "Breckie, put your finger 
on the part that is different." 

Without a moment's hesitation he laid one chubby finger on the 
long neck. 

The question about the calories was only one remark among 
many indicating a previous assimilation of certain words or 
things. On those rare occasions when I went to a motion pic- 
ture show I explained to Breck, before going, as was my custom 



136 BRECKIE 

if at any time I left the house in the evening, where I was going 
and that some one else would be on hand in my study should he 
wake up and need anything. He questioned me closely about the 
motion pictures and asked why he didn't go. So I gave him 
several of the reasons. He had also seen peanuts and asked 
about them, and why he didn't eat them, and I had explained. 

There came to the school this autumn the father of one of 
the students, who met Breckinridge and greeted him in a jolly, 
companionable way. 

"You come off with me," he said, "and we will get some pea- 
nuts." 

Breckie looked at him with serious eyes. "I don't go wif 
stwangers," he replied, "I don't eat peanuts, dey aren't good for 
me. 

His friendly visitor appeared nonplussed for a moment, then 
tried again. 

"Well, let me take you to the moving pictures," he said. 

"I don't go to de moving pictures," said Breckie, still patiently 
explaining, "dey hurt my eyes." 

At this the man, so Dick reported to me afterwards, doubled 
up and made no further advances, while Breckie, all unconscious 
of the sensation he had sprung, ran with Juliette out into the 
glorious world of rock and tree and garden — which was his 
nul^ery. 

Though social and cordial still with those he met, Breck, in 
the latter part of his fourth year, objected to people more than 
he had done formerly. He never avoided an introduction or a 
greeting but was fuller of eager plans than of old and impatient 
of anything which detained him from the things that really mat- 
tered, the running and growing things, the things for digging 
and climbing and building and throwing and tooting and calling 
• — the really worth while things whose music was the gladness of 
his world. 

Then too he grew fonder of a few people. The little circle of 
adoring faces, grandparents, parents, nurse, cousin, a few dear 
friends who saw him every day, these symbolized love to him and 
he began consciously to seek love and return it. Often he 



BRECKIE 137 

dropped his play to climb up in my lap and pat me with his 
little hand, saying: "Boppie, I want to pet you." Never a day 
passed that he did not slip up to me more than once with the 
exclamation : "Boppie, I love you." Whereupon I caught him 
to me, repeating all the endearments which came to me. Once I 
used the expression : "I love you stacks and stacks," and after 
that he often said : "I love you wif all my stacks." Once I was 
singing : 

"Rise, Breckie, Rise, 

Wipe out your eyes — 

Fly to the east, and fly to the west, — 

And fly to the one that you love best — " 

when he said to me : "Boppie, you are de one dat I love 
best." 

At night when I was tucking him in we sometimes vied with 
each other in large comparisons expressive of the magnitude of 
our affection. He slept out all night this year until the second 
week in December and I caught at natural phenomena, viewed 
from his balcony crib, for my imagery: 

"Breckie Thompson, I love you more than the moon is far 
off." 

"Boppie, I love you more dan de Cwescent is big." 

One night in December, after he had come in to my bedroom 
to sleep and it was bitter cold, I threw open both windows and 
was about to slip out, having previously kissed him, when he 
began to cry and said: "You haven't loved me." That didn't 
mean so much the expressions of affection as a final hug. He 
liked, the last thing, to have me put my head down by him, he 
saying: "Boppie, I want to lie on your arm," and often whis- 
pering to me one or two special things. Every day and evening 
I let him know of his dearness to me and the high opinion I 
held of him : "He's so precious and good, this baby — such a dear 
little boy, such a brave soldier." We did not "run him down" 
ever. He knew, whether he understood it or not, that he stood 
well in the eyes of those who made up his world, and, quick as we 
were to beg his pardon if we had made a mistake, he, the ever 
generous, was even quicker to set himself right if he had offended 



138 BRECKIE 

one of us. If I said: "Breckinridge, it wasn't right to do that 
and I am vexed, or provoked, with you about it," he begged 
pardon at once. Not from fear — he never had occasion to fear 
any one — but because he wanted a restoration of the harmonious 
relations which tied him to his people. 

The same entire absence of any sense of fear governed his 
admissions of wrong doing. He never denied transgressing. 
Sometimes Juliette asked him: "Qui vous a dit de faire qa?" 
and he answered: "C'est la terre," or "c'est cet arbre," or, if 
in the house, "c'est le plancher," or "c'est la chaise." Some- 
times he said : "c'est Teddy." But he was willing to tell at once 
just what he had done. He made of course at times the most 
fantastic statements and went ofif into the wildest flights of 
imagination, after the manner of all normal little children, — 
but of deliberate deception, the seeking to hide a wrong doing 
or to deny it, there is not in all his history a single trace. 
Potentially fearless and honorable he came to us and his 
escutcheon was still unblemished when it passed out of our 
keeping. 

His physical development during his fourth year continued to 
keep pace with his mental. At three years and nine months his 
weight was thirty-six and a half pounds and his height thirty- 
nine and three-fourths inches. I had weighed him every week 
the first year of his life, every month the second, and every three 
months thereafter — deducting always the weight of his clothes 
(which I ascertained by weighing them separately) before chart- 
ing the pounds and ounces on his record. With his gorgeous 
color, straight back and broad chest, firm flesh, and face alight 
with intelligence and good humor from under its crown of 
yellow curls, he presented a superb picture of childhood — nor- 
mal childhood, but so rarely seen in its perfection that among 
the ignorant there was often the impression that something must 
be wrong with him somewhere. A woman stopped Juliette once 
to tell her of a prescription which might get the red out of his 
cheeks and a laborer suggested that such a buxom child must 
be bloated. After he was dead his fine appearance was often 



BRECKIE 139 

recalled and the comment made that "they had always said he 
couldn't be natural." 

27 

We wanted Breck to acquire early an appreciation of the dig- 
nity of labor and the value of earnings. I find the following 
brief record in my journal dated October eleventh: "Breckin- 
ridge worked this morning with Juliette's husband, Henri Carni, 
at digging potatoes and received for wages one for himself. This 
he will have for his dinner." I well recall his radiant delight 
over this potato when he brought it to me, full of eager explana- 
tions, and the pleasure it gave him to eat what he had won 
by the labor of his own hands. 

Naturally he liked to do whatever any of us did. Juliette 
was learning the Marseillaise this October to sing on the evening 
of the twenty-fifth at a church social, while she waved a French 
flag. The idea seized instant hold of Breck's imagination and 
nothing answered but that he must learn the Marseillaise too. 
We called his attention to the Tri-color of France hung with the 
Union Jack and the Star Spangled Banner on our wall — silk 
flags his godmother had sent him — and told him of that won- 
derful land, whose language he spoke, which had always been 
friendly to ours and which suffered now so cruelly under the 
merciless attacks of Germany. 

Breck learned the first verse of the Marseillaise with the ease 
with which he memorized everything that interested him, and 
sang it after this fashion : 

AUons enfants de la patwie, 

Le jour de gloire est awwive 
Contre nous de la tywanie — 

L'etendard sanglant est leve — 

(Here he repeated, rather short of breath) 
L'etendard sanglant est leve — 

(Sometimes he repeated this again, as if he couldn't quite let 
go of it — but he always skipped the next line, the one beginning 



140 BRECKIE 

"Entendez-vous — " and came out deep and full, like the pedal 
tones of an organ, on this :) 

Mugir ces foweces soldats? 

(Then very rapidly he continued) 

lis viennent j usque dans nos bwas 
Egorger nos fils, nos campagnes. 

(Here he stopped, got a new start, pitched his voice high, ex- 
tended one arm and pealed:) 

Aux armes ! citoyens ! Formez vos bataillons ! 

Marchons ! marchons ! qu'un sang impur abweuve nos sillons." 

His voice ran away with him at the last and he stopped, quite 
out of breath. He liked to sing the Marseillaise, but needless 
to say he never sang that or anything else in public, and was 
never in his life kept up at night on any occasion for any- 
thing. 

28 

Breck and Juliette once in a great while went down Spring 
street in the little town for their morning walk on an errand 
for me. At such times, Juliette told me, if they had more than 
one thing to do, Breckie said to her: "Qu'est ce que Boppie 
pense que nous sommes? EUe nous tiens bien occuper." 

He enjoyed stopping at the springs, en route, to drink — but 
on the whole liked to get back to more informal surroundings 
and those remoter spnngs which the tourists rarely frequented. 

Soon after the first frosts a cricket took refuge in our apart- 
ments, to my great delight. Breck too was excited over his chirp- 
ing and when I showed him the funny brown fellow he agreed 
that we should invite him to spend the winter with us. Unfor- 
tunately we forgot to tell Juliette of our invitation and she had 
no sooner laid eyes on the cricket, which she failed to recog- 
nize as a "grillon" of her native Switzerland, than she blotted 
out his too optimistic existence. When I heard of it I grieved 



BRECKIE 141 

and Breckie said to her : "Ce n'etait pas bien, Juliette, de tuer ce 
gwillon. Mais vous n'avez pas fait ga expwes. Vous ne saviez 
pas." 

A few days later our joy was renewed with the advent of 
a second cheery intruder, which Juliette and the chambermaid, 
her sister Blanche, now cherished as carefully as Breckie and I. 
But the death of the first still weighed on Breck's mind, for he 
said again to Juliette : "II ne faut pas tuer les betes que Boppie 
mette dans la maison." 

He continued in the latter part of his fourth year to say on 
Thursdays and Sundays when I went out to take him up after his 
nap: "Boppie, are you taking care of me dis afternoon?" While 
I helped him dress (for fie had not gotten very far along with 
dressing himself, and laced his shoes every which way, though 
he could undress himself nicely because of his underwaists but- 
toning in front) we sometimes discussed where we would spend 
the afternoon. 

A favorite walk of his, which we took now and then on that 
account, although I was not partial to it myself, was down to 
the railroad station in the valley at the edge of town. He loved 
to explore there, visit the big water tank, climb the stacks of 
lumber, throw rocks in a creek bordering the railroad yard, 
examine into the coupling of the cars on the siding and investi- 
gate a thousand things of no interest whatever to me. But as, 
owing to the smallness and remoteness of our town on its one 
little road, there were no trains for hours at a time and we didn't 
seem in any one's way, I could not but take him to a spot so 
delectable to him and where there was so much valuable ma- 
terial for his education. I specified that we were not to cross 
a track, even the siding, without looking both up and down and 
listening for a possible train. This he never failed to do — his 
expression quite absorbed, his yellow head bent sideways, as he 
looked earnestly in both directions. 

Below the station about half a mile was the septic tank where 
terminated the water supply of the town. Breck knew the city 
water works from A to Z in a general way quite as well as the 
city commission. We had gone more than once to the reservoir 



142 BRECKIE 

in a basin among the hills two miles above the town. We passed 
along the winding rocky road by the Oil and Johnson springs 
to get there and, as we descended into the romantic looking 
valley, Breck liked me to repeat : 

"Adown the glen came armed men, 
Their trampling sounded nearer." 

He knew that the water in this reservoir was pumped by the 
big engine below it up into the standpipe on the mountain just 
above the town and that then it passed into pipes which carried 
it direct to his bath tub. He commented on this often when he 
turned on the faucets and it was after he had questioned me 
as to where the water went when he pulled up the stopper that 
we paid a visit to the septic tank and he learned that the water 
ran on down through other pipes, called sewers, into this recep- 
tacle. 

Breckie liked variety in his walks and play as much as any 
child and had caught up an expression of Juliette's, when she 
suggested the substitution of one accustomed thing for another: 
"pour changer." One morning early I was preparing his orange 
juice in the Milk room when he came running in with his red 
wrapper and slippers on. 

"I want my owange juice now, Boppie," he begged, "wight 
now." 

"But, Breckie," I protested, "you know you never drink it 
until you have brushed your teeth and we haven't brushed them 
yet." 

"O," he said, "let me have it first for a change." 

He and his father had a sort of game which they called asking 
foolish questions. It developed out of Breck's saying, when he 
first saw his father after an absence of several days : "Faver, 
did you come back?" 

Dick answered: "O, no, I'm still in Little Rock." Breck 
caught the point at once and after that if he asked : "Faver, 
are you shaving?" and Dick made an absurd, inconsequential 
reply he expected Dick to ask him something equally obvious, 
based on his occupation at the moment, such as : 



BRECKIE 143 

"Breckinridge, are you building with your blocks?" Then he 
rejoined with quite evident amusement : "O, no, I'm playing 
tennis." 

They had another game which they reserved for drives in 
the car with Breck sitting on the front seat by his father. This 
was to see which could first call attention to the passing objects. 
One would exclaim : "I see, I see a telegraph pole." 

"I see, I see a bwoken fence." 

"I see, I see a jack rabbit crossing the road." 

"I see two men walking and I got dem first." 

Breck seldom used, in fact I never remember his using, the 
words nobody, nothing. Instead, he said anybody, anything with 
a negative meaning. If I asked : "What did you bring back 
from your walk, Breckie?" and he had nothing, he replied: 
"Anyfing." If he wanted to tell me nobody was in a room he 
said: "Anybody in dere." He was speaking once to a guest 
at the breakfast table and didn't get a reply. Then he said: 
"Anybody at home." 

In conversing with us at this period he frequently vouchsafed 
an "O" after any remark of ours which he seemed to be con- 
sidering. For instance, if he asked for a cracker between meals 
and I said : "Not until supper," he replied : "O," and made no 
further comment. If I explained the meaning of something 
unusual he was apt to reply just "O" — questioning again later if 
he had not understood. 

29 

When I first put on the Red Cross cap and brassard with my 
white uniforms to give lessons in the making of surgical dress- 
ings and Breckie saw me he asked what they were. Then he 
went to Juliette and explained to her : "Juliette, Boppie est une 
garde malade de la Cwoix Wouge (Croix Rouge)." 

Dr. Bolton, the school physician, introduced the innovation this 
autumn at Crescent College of inoculating the entire student body 
with typhoid and paratyphoid vaccine, as well as such of the 



144 BRECKIE 

faculty and employees who desired it. Among others he inocu- 
lated Breck. I explained to him beforehand that it would hurt, 
but that all soldiers had to have it done, and he came up 
proudly with bared arm eager for the experience. However, it 
was a shock to him and he cried for a moment, saying with 
emphasis : "No, I don't like it." 

That same night, Sunday, October twenty-seventh, I left for 
Fort Smith to give an address on Public Health Nursing before 
the State Federation of Women's Clubs. I had not left Breckie 
for a night since I went to Fort Smith a year and a half before, 
and I hated to do it even though I knew that with his grand- 
parents, father, and Juliette he was as safe and as cherished 
as with me. I felt this to be an urgent matter for which the 
times were ripe, so I steeled my heart and went. 

Daily letters came during my brief absence of less than a week, 
telling that Breckie continued in as glowing health and spirits 
as when I was with him and was constantly alluding to the 
overalls (his first pair) which I had promised to bring him when 
I returned. On the Tuesday after I left his father wrote me: 
"Breckinridge thrives quite as he does when Fm away. He 
occasionally forgets you are gone and then smiles and laughs 
at his mistake. He scarcely ever refers to your being in 'Smort 
Smiff' without mentioning the overalls." 

My mother wrote the same day about his waking in the morn- 
ing, which she could hear very well since one end of his balcony 
joined her bedroom: "He slept all night. This morning he 
called his father instead of you. I could not hear Dick's reply 
but suppose he said it was too early to get up. Breckinridge's 
reply to that was : 'Well, I heard a dwop of de bell.' Still Dick 
did not seem convinced, for Breckinridge said: 'But, faver, I 
heard a dwop of it.' " 

She wrote the next day: "Breckinridge is as perfectly well 
and good as a boy can be. He has no trouble at all from his 
arm (the inoculation). I asked him what I was to tell you and 
he said: 'Venez et apportez mes over/ialls.' I am quite afraid 
the Father of his Country may be the occasion of confusing 
his morals. Dick was trying to have him tell the cherry tree 



BRECKIE 145 

episode and Breckinridge wound it up after this fashion : 'I cut 
it down, faver. I cannot tell de twuf.' " 

I had written that I would be back Saturday night and that 
Breckie would see me when he woke up Sunday morning. Of 
course I saw him as he lay sleeping but he did not awaken 
until his friends the birds had set up their early symphony. Then 
Breckie called me by name from his balcony, perfectly mindful 
of the fact that I would be on hand, and when I ran out to him 
his charming face, in its outdoor sleeping cap, beamed at me as 
he exclaimed: "Boppie, did you come back?" 

30 

I found my loved Aunt Jane and her little grandson, Brooke 
Alexander, here on my return — following the plan which had 
been formed months before of their spending the winter at 
Crescent College. She was ordered south by her physician for 
her health and brought Brooke, another only child, to be with 
Breckie that there might be companionship for them both. As 
a matter of fact, this companionship, daily and constant, was not 
interrupted while Breckie lived and it added the one thing he 
had begun to need to complete the normal tenor of his days. 

Brooke was a year and a half his senior, better poised and 
more responsible, a highly imaginative and intelligent child — 
but not so robust as Breckie at the time of his coming south. 
He looked thin and pale and was just recovering from an opera- 
tion for cervical adenitis. But in the bracing air and sunshine 
of our Ozark mountains, living in the rugged outdoors with 
Breck, he soon put on pounds of flesh and his cheeks glowed 
with deep red blood. He was as dark as Breck was fair, with a 
shock of thick brown hair to offset Breck's yellow curls, and the 
two Bs, as Aunt Jane called them, formed a jolly and well con- 
trasted pair in their play together. 

With them it was share and share alike in everything and we 
tried to duplicate the cherished possessions of each. The first 
rainy day disclosed the fact that Breckie had a little umbrella 



146 BRECKIE 

with a dog handle and Brooke a new raincoat. We promptly 
ordered rain hats for them both and a coat for Breck so that 
they might play out in the rain as freely as on other days with- 
out the need of carrying umbrellas. Dick took out member- 
ships in the Red Cross for them both at one and the same time 
and Breck wore his pin on the left side of his blue winter coat. 
They built marvelous houses with the contents of the basket of 
blocks and used the insets from Breck's Montessori cylindrical 
insets as men and creatures and the long pieces of wood for 
trains. 

Brooke's more advanced mentality devised new games into 
which Breck entered with his accustomed seriousness. One they 
called a "monkey game," but my uninitiated eyes never saw them 
do anything except hold sofa pillows on their heads and run 
from the study into my bedroom and, through the bath room, 
into Dick's, calling out : "Bogieman, bogieman." 

"Breckinridge," I asked one evening when this had filled 
in the interval between coming in and eating supper, "what is a 
bogieman ?" 

"He's a bad man," he answered, "Bwooke knows about him." 

"Who told you about him?" I asked Brooke. 

"Two children," he replied briefly, and the range of knowl- 
edge of the subject appeared to stop there. When I said: "But 
he isn't really a man, only a play man," neither child seemed con- 
cerned about it one way or the other. 

Another game devised by Brooke and entered into with zest by 
Breckinridge was to take bits of Brooke's modeling clay, make 
it up into assorted shapes and carry it about on a box top, calling 
out: "Jewelry for sale, jewelry for sale." 

Dick played with them like another boy. As I came in one 
evening I heard a roaring sound accompanied by scuffling and 
was made aware, even before I had heard an explanation, that 
all three were playing bear. As if further to emphasize the fact 
of its being a game Breckie ran by without noticing me — his face 
solemn as an Indian's. Then all three began rolling over and 
over. 



BRECKIE 147 



31 



Brooke's taste in books was decidedly more mature than 
Break's. In fact there was hardly anything in the way of a story 
which he did not enjoy and his capacity for a more prolonged 
concentration kept him from getting tired of the same thing as 
soon as Breck did. One day I pulled out a copy of "Jack the 
Giant Killer," illustrated by Hugh Thomson, for which Breckie 
had not hitherto cared and began reading it to both boys. But 
I soon saw that Breck was not old enough for it yet. Not only 
did it fail in holding his attention but it made him distinctly 
uneasy. "O Boppie, don't wead about it," he begged. "I don't 
like giants." 

Brooke took to the Fred and Lucy and Bumbleton stories 
with a zest quite equal to Breck's and I enlarged them consider- 
ably in my daily recitals of the interesting trio. A permanent 
villain in the piece now came to the front in the shape of a 
wicked radiator from their own home, who chased the children 
through the forest depths, breathing out hot steam as he ran. 
Bullets glanced off this desperado as did arrows (for Fred, 
though not old enough for a gun, could and did shoot with a 
bow and arrow and Breck's father made him one like it) but 
when Roger slipped up behind him with a long pole and turned 
him over, there he had to lie flat on the ground and would have 
lain so forever had not Mr. Todd, his friend the fox, sneaked 
along and turned him back upright again. 

Down at the foot of a long flight of steps, which led out of 
the Crescent grounds into the road above the Catholic chapel, 
there was a leaky pipe connected with the radiation of the col- 
lege out of which the steam poured on wintry days. If I passed 
there with Breckinridge he was instantly metamorphosed into 
Fred and called to me : 

"Lucy, dat's de wicked wadiator, Lucy. Wun, Lucy, wun." 

On the Thursday and Sunday afternoons when Aunt Jane and 
I took the children out with us our favorite rendezvous was a 
wagon on the edge of town near the standpipe just outside the 



148 BRECKIE 

yard of a man and his wife we knew pleasantly. Our real 
acquaintance began over this wagon, which Breck and I had 
visited occasionally during the summer. It belonged to Mr. 
Daily, the owner of the yard, and he was always most kind about 
letting Breck climb in and out of it, work the brake, and have a 
delectable time with it generally. Near by it in the summer there 
lay a log on which Breck and I walked until he tired, balancing 
ourselves so as not to fall in the water we played flowed by on 
both sides. The Bailys had also a collie dog, a wonderful fellow 
who drove their cows in every night, and in appearance so 
strongly resembled the wise Kep in "J^^^i"^^ Puddleduck" that 
when I first saw him I said aloud : "There's Kep." 

"Yes, sir," said Breck, with emphasis, agreeing at once. But 
when we found his name was Mac we held Kep in reserve for 
other yellow collies. Never did we meet one that Breck or I 
didn't exclaim : "There's Kep." 

To this delightful region of wagon, Mac, a pump, chickens and 
one guinea, horse, buggy, cows, and friendly faces who encour- 
aged the play of little boys, Breck and I early introduced Aunt 
Jane and Brooke, and while she and I sat on a plank by the 
fence, planning the future of these children, or on the porch for 
a chat with Mrs. Baily, the two little cousins explored to their 
heart's content — and indeed nothing could have contented their 
hearts more. I meet Mac sometimes now, following his master 
on horseback over the country roads, and the sight of him re- 
calls with singular clearness the details of those late autumn and 
early winter days. 

One place we passed on our way to the wagon was a gully 
spanned by a little bridge. Here Breck and I had sometimes 
acted the story of "The Three Goats Gruff" and here we brought 
Aunt Jane and Brooke to act it with us. With them we did it in 
fine style. I was the Goblin under the Bridge and the voice for 
the Bridge, while Aunt Jane, Brooke, and Breck tramped sol- 
emnly over one by one as the Three Goats Gruff — Big Goat 
Gruff being of course the most favored part on account of the 
heavy way he walks across the Bridge and the fight in which he 
vanquishes the Goblin later. We kept up the game until both 



I'lPfjokc ,'iii(l l'>rc(k had hccii cm li in turn all the (jf).'i(s (ini(T and 
llic (iohlin and I'ridj^c. I'.rcck as the I'.ijj float CindT, walking 
heavily over the I'ridj^c — trip lr<)|), lii|» Irop -wilh his earnest 
cxprcssifjn, and Hicn darling onl to hull nut so ihal I hlcw up 
hkc a puff hall, caused nie to (|uake in my (iround (irijjpers when 
1 was llie (johliii. 

I'rookc vied with P.rerkinridj^e in dclip;ht over the station w<llk 
and l)f)lli were; especially altracled to a heap of rusly scraj) iron 
in llial ncif^hhorhood from which they drew forth occasional 
ticasurcs such as hciit liooj)',, iron handles, spikes, and nails. 
Su( h trophies set me thinking of my yoim^cr hrotlurr at ahoiil the 
same aj,'e when lie said: "These may seem like trash to you, 
hut they're ^old to mc." 

f)nc afternoon we tof)k the chihhen to ;i hlacksmith's shf)p 
where they watched with int(;nse interirst \\u-. heatin/^ atid :.ha|)inj^ 
of shoes in a forge and then the actual slu)einj( of a hors<* who 
stepped in opportunely. After we. had thank(rd the blacksmith 
and were about to leave we nolicitd a bnlj^inj^ ap|)earanc(t about 
the sweater pockets of both little boys aufl ;in exainination re- 
vealed that they had stuffed them full oi nails. 

In their relations with each otlutr the children Sf|uabbled and 
ff)Uj(lil at least once or twice a flay and pl;iye»l tf)j(ether with 
lli<r utmost sweetness the balance f)f the lim<r. Aunt Jan<t was all 
for havinj^ l)i( k teadi them to wrestle so that their (juarrels 
could spend themselves in this manly form of sj)ort, and, as 
IJreck was usually tlur aj^j^ressor, w<' told l'>rook<r, when at- 
la( ked, tfj clinch (jiii« kly and throw him down. They w<Me build- 
ing with the bIo< ks one eveninj^ and I'rooke, ;i more lapid 
builder than I'.re* k, had taken more than his share. I'r( < k, who 
was lackinj^' in subtleties, usually met such a situation by starting 
a fi^dit, but on this occasion he said to Aunt J;ine: 

"Aunt Jane, do you know why I don't hit I'.ooke in th(* head 
wif a block!' I'.ecause he would fwow me down." 

Another tim(; after l'.r'*oke liarl aJ^■lin appropriated the lion's 
share of the blocks hi'. Iieail iclenlcd ;ii the ■.ii'lit of I'reck's 



I50 BRECKIE 

unfinished mansion and he returned a portion of them. Breck 
instantly melted into sweetness and gratitude. "Dat was kind 
of him, wasn't it?" he said to Aunt Jane, "to give me my 
blocks." 

Their affection for each other was tender and real. Breck 
careened into a zinc table one late afternoon when he was run- 
ning after Juliette in the pantry and gave his head a terrific 
blow. He turned white and fell into Juliette's arms, but was 
able to cry and presently beg: "Embwassez — embwassez." 
Brooke's distress was keen and he kept begging: "Don't cry, 
Breckinridge, don't cry." 

Another day when Brooke caught his finger in the toy pistol 
and snapped it he began to wail for help and as I ran to unloose 
it Breckie chimed in with his tears, saying: "O, I don't want 
Bwooke to cwy." (Sometimes he called him Bwooke and some- 
times Booke.) 

There was a marked tendency on the part of both to com- 
bine together upon occasions against adults. One afternoon after 
the snow had come they were climbing a hill with Aunt Jane 
and me and Breckie kept lagging behind. Ordinarily I let him 
go his own gait pretty much, but this particular afternoon was 
far advanced and we had barely time to go where we had 
planned and get back before night. So I explained to Breck 
why we hadn't time to linger, and when he dawdled anyway I 
went on without him. By the time I had reached the top of the 
hill he was calling to me to come back. I answered that I would 
wait for him but not return. Brooke, however, ran down a little 
way to meet him and Aunt Jane and I could hear them con- 
ferring as they approached us, Breckie vergmg on tears and ex- 
plaining to a sympathetic Brooke: "Boppie went up de walk 
wifout me and it wasn't wight. I am vexed wif her." Brooke's 
solicitude was inaudible but it succeeded in drying his cousin's 
tears. 

Brooke had to take the inoculations too and he did it with 
a fine spirit, stipulating only that his grandmother hold his 
hand. 



BRECKIE 151 



33 

The two little boys did not sleep together. Brooke had a bed 
in his grandmother's room. But Juliette gave them their baths 
at the same time in the one big tub and they took all their meals 
together. First they had breakfast (preceded before they were 
dressed by the juice of two oranges each) downstairs with Dick, 
who carried their bowls of oatmeal and cups of milk with him 
on a tray. Oatmeal, ten ounces of milk, and a slice of wheat 
or rye bread with butter formed their invariable breakfast. 
The next meal was eight ounces of milk and a graham cracker, 
at eleven thirty, just after their bath. Then came dinner at two- 
fifteen. This consisted of a poached or coddled egg with a bit 
of bacon, or a piece of broiled rabbit, young chicken or steak, 
a baked potato or boiled brown rice with butter, a green vegetable 
and, for dessert, a baked apple, custard, gelatine, a "bricelet" or 
tea cake or animal cracker made by Juliette, or a simple pudding. 
Their supper, served at five-thirty, was always brown bread 
and milk with either stewed prunes or apple sauce. Breck had 
only the pulp of the prunes but Brooke could eat the skins as 
well and the skins of the baked apples. 

Breck's little white table was not large enough for both boys, 
so we had had sent up from Fort Smith a somewhat larger table 
and the chair that went with it which belonged to Clifton's baby- 
hood in Russia. There was ample room on it for a tray for each 
boy and, as they sat at the ends, their feet didn't tangle up in 
the middle — thus eliminating scuffling at meals. Dinners and sup- 
pers were taken at this table. 

34 

Breck's fondness for rabbits and chickens as companions led 
me into the consideration of how to make them a part of his 
diet without fostering in him a callous indifiference to eating his 
friends on the one hand or a morbid aversion to meat on the 
other. So I began explaining to him, even before curiosity 
about the matter had awakened in him, that when he ate a little 



152 BRECKIE 

chicken or rabbit he let its body come into his and in so doing 
released its spirit for a higher form of life. I tried by every 
possible analogy which he could understand to explain to him 
that the life in the body was not all body with anything — not 
even with the trees. A fairy story I had read in my childhood 
and the source of which I have altogether forgotten gives as the 
chief ambition of a loaf of bread to be eaten by a good child. I 
could not truthfully tell Breckie that the desire of the chickens 
and rabbits was to be eaten by him (we did not go into par- 
ticulars about the chops and steaks) but I did tell him that I 
thought it good for them as well as him that their bodies should 
enter his, else it wouldn't be like that, and that their life was 
probably as immortal, though less individual, than his. Some- 
times I talked for the chicken, as he ate it, saying : 

"Thank you, Breckinridge, for letting my body come into 
yours. Thank you, Breckinridge, for letting me go without my 
body to the seashore of endless worlds." 

Breckie always answered most politely : "You're welcome," 
and several times he said : "Dat was kind of me to eat dat 
chicken, wasn't it Boppie?" 

But often, after I had attempted these explanations and felt 
how floundering and inadequate they were to explain the mighty 
fact that all creation lives at the expense of life, I said to him: 
"O, little boy, this is what Boppie thinks — what she is think- 
ing now. But you must think things for yourself when you get 
bigger." I had no doubt but that his thoughts, when he evolved 
them, would inspire and sustain him. 

35 

On Thanksgiving day I showed Breckinridge a colored picture 
by Ferris which had come out in a current issue of one of the 
magazines of the First Thanksgiving, and I told him the fine old 
story. I told him that the people thus rescued from starvation 
were early Americans and because they had fought hard fights 
with primal conditions (I enumerated the conditions in simple 
language) he could play happily in the woods to-day. I told 



BRECKIE 153 

him that those particular men hadn't been his grandfathers be- 
cause his grandfathers had landed further south, but that all of 
us made a special feast of Thanksgiving day in honor of them. 

"Since that time, Breckie," I said, "when Thanksgivng day 
comes around every American thanks God for something he is 
glad to have, just the way these men in the picture are doing — 
thanking Him on their knees for something to eat. Since you 
came, Breckie," I continued, "I have thanked Him every Thanks- 
giving day for you. Now don't you want to thank Him this 
Thanksgiving for something you are very glad to have ?" 

Ever ready, he said at once, with his responsive smile : "I will 
fank Him for my shovels." 

With that, down he flopped on his chubby knees and said: 
"Fank you, God, for dose shovels." 

It was one of his rare prayers and like all he ever uttered, 
individual. 

I did not write this down at the time, although I spoke of it 
to the other members of the family, but nearly two months 
later, on the seventeenth of January, when I happened to be 
writing in my journal, I recalled the incident and decided to 
record it then. It was the first evening of Breck's brief illness, 
when he only seemed a little unwell but was sleeping badly, — 
and while I was writing he called to me several times. Upon 
one of these occasions when I had run in to him and was bend- 
ing over him I said : "What was it, Breck, that you thanked God 
for on Thanksgiving day ?" 

Instantly eager comprehension lit up his face as he replied: 
"For my shovels — I fanked Him for my shovels." 

He did not then or on the previous occasion vouchsafe a rea- 
son for his exceptional gratitude for shovels and I never asked 
him. We had not, in fact, alluded to the subject at any time in 
the two intervening months. 

36 

Juliette and Henri had two pigs and each little boy laid claim 
to one and was much interested in the discussion as to what dis- 



154 BRECKIE 

position was to be made of them. It was decided that Brooke's 
pig should be bred and Break's killed, cured, and smoked. Both 
little boys were promised a pigling apiece from "Edna's" litter 
when it arrived and the black and white pig, Breckie's, was 
slaughtered early in December. Brooke was expatiating at 
length over his pig being chosen for the high office of maternity 
when Brcck interrupted him with: "i?ut Juliette will have 
much good to eat out of mine," and to Juliette: "N'est ce pas, 
Juliette, que vous aurez de la viande a manger du mien?" 

All through November the joy of the two little boys was 
to go out in the woods with Liliane's wagon, which Breck had 
helped give her on her birthday, and fill it with acorns for the 
pigs. The feeding of pigs, chickens, and Belgian hares was a 
daily recurring delight. They liked sometimes to hunt for dry 
pieces of wood instead of acorns and to fill the wagon and load 
their arms with this kind of kindling. The Carnis bought a tall 
pine tree on the hillside back of their home for seventy-five 
cents, to cut down and use for firewood. But they didn't plan 
to cut it before February as they had enough to last until then. 
I grieved over the loss of the big tree, but Breckie was not 
troubled with sentimental regrets so long as the others in the 
forest remained, and he vied with Juliette in describing how 
fine and tall a tree this one was and how wonderful it was go- 
ing to be to see it fall. 

The satisfying regularity of the wholesome lives of our two 
little boys reminded Aunt Jane and me of a little book which 
gladdened the memories of us both called "From Do Nothing 
Hall to Happy Day House." In Happy Day House lived Lady 
Love, who looked at the children and all they did through rose 
colored glasses, and Dame Duty, whose work box was opened 
by a key called "Do It Yourself." 

37 

Another member of my family now went into war service 
when my only sister sailed from New York the day after 
Thanksgiving for a port in France. She was accepted by the 



BRECKIE 155 

Y. M. C. A. for canteen work over there earlier in the month and 
when my mother learned of it she went on to New York to stay 
with her until she sailed. Before she left she made both little 
boys helmets such as she knitted in great numbers for the 
soldiers — except that theirs were dark blue instead of olive drab 
or gray. 

The cold came swiftly about the second week in December, 
just at the time of my mother's return, and more terribly than 
any of us remembered it in this region. Breckie continued to 
take his naps out of doors, for he was equipped with all the 
suitable paraphernalia, but I became alarmed the second night 
of the first bitter spell lest his nose might freeze and brought 
him in. He had stayed out all night the night before when the 
thermometer tumbled below zero, but this second night when 
Dick came to bed after eleven with the information that it was 
already ten below and going down, we agreed that it would be 
better to bring the soldier in. His indoor crib had been taken to 
the attic, so he had to come into my big bed for the remainder of 
the night and was so excited over the novelty of the situation he 
found it hard to sleep. The next day the little crib came down 
from the attic to occupy its accustomed place next my bed and 
Breckie went to sleep indoors at night but with open windows 
and plenty of Boreas. 

38 

I mentioned a toy pistol as having been given Breck before he 
was old enough to play with it. He had a gun dating back to 
about the same period and was just beginning to enjoy them 
both, in the latter part of his third year, when his father asked 
me to put them away quietly as he was afraid Breck would 
learn from his play with them a careless sense of the use of fire- 
arms. So they vanished out of Breck's life but he never ceased 
to remember them. As the months passed he made guns and 
pistols for himself out of sticks of wood and often told Juliette 
and me that he had lost his gun and that he thought he left 
his pistol at his grandmother's island. His father promised him 
a real gun when he should be old enough to use it — but the de- 



156 BRECKIE 

sire for its toy predecessor continued so pronounced that I sug- 
gested to Dick that if he would let me give the little gun and 
pistol back to Breckie I would, so far from letting them teach 
him a careless handling of firearms, make them a means of 
teaching him their real use and value. To this Dick readily 
agreed and so one day in December I appeared before Breck's 
dazzled eyes with the little old gun and pistol, and I told him 
quite truthfully that I had taken them out of my trunk where 
they had been lying all of this time, 

"Now, Pidgy darling," I said, "yo" ^^e going to have them 
both to play with so long as you don't point them at any 
one. Guns and pistols are dangerous. They kill people. So 
we never point them at anything we do not expect to kill. And 
you must be as careful with these little guns as you will be 
with the real one we are going to give you when you are big- 
ger." I had a rifle and a shot gun with which I hunted in my 
girlhood and I often told Breckie they should be his 
some day. Meanwhile I began his education with the toys 
as I had promised his father, and as my own father and 
uncle had taught me when I learned to shoot. He could do 
anything he liked with either except point them, even in fun, at 
one of us. That was absolutely forbidden and the penalty for 
disobedience to this law was a forfeiture of the offending 
weapons. 

They never had to be forfeited but once. Breck was as 
cautious and particular with them as if real shot poured out 
of the barrels. He and Brooke played alternately with pistol 
and gun and I think nothing Breck ever had gave him more 
constant pleasure than both. He came to me in triumph as soon 
as he could pull the trigger of the pistol, which was stiff, by 
himself. He shot all the chairs, killing imaginary lions and 
tigers, and Germans, including the Kaiser, over and over. But I 
cautioned him about not hurting German women and children. 
*Tt is they who kill women and children," I explained, "but we 
don't do that. Their women and children will always be safe 
with our soldiers." 

One day when we started out and he and Brooke had pistol 



BRECKIE 157 

and gun Breck announced that he was going to shoot birds. 
"Not the dear little song birds," I begged, and he replied: 

"I will shoot a chicken hawk only." 

One night he begged to take the pistol to bed with him and 
Teddy and I said he might if he wouldn't play with it in the 
night. I was afraid the unaccustomed privilege would excite him 
too much for continued sleep — and I was right. Some time be- 
fore dawn he woke suddenly, perhaps the result of rolling over 
on his hard bed fellow, and began snapping the pistol. Naturally 
that wakened me and I requested him to desist. Temptation 
proved irresistible ; the snapping continued, so I took the pistol 
away as I had said I would do. Whereupon Breckie wailed: 
"I can't defend myself wifout my pistol." But he did drop off 
to sleep again promptly and so did I. 

He had gotten so that he could use his hands with some 
skill, not only in pulling triggers and hammering nails but in 
cutting with a pair of blunt pointed scissors. One day just about 
the time he was to come in I laid a large catalogue and the 
scissors on the rug in front of the door. He needed no other 
invitation. I heard him run in. There followed silence and I, 
looking through the doorway, saw him busily cutting — his face 
intensely serious, his mind absorbed. If the basket of blocks 
happened to be standing near the door when he dashed in, down 
he sat at once, pulled off his worsted gloves and, without wait- 
ing to be divested of coat, leggings, cap, helmet, and goloshes, he 
began to build. When he and Brooke came in together a sort of 
rushing sound accompanied them, like Boreas in the pine trees 
or a swollen stream down Leatherwood Hollow. Two tongues 
talking at once, four little feet pattering, and that general com- 
motion which precedes the headlong entrance of two sturdy 
boys . . . well, it was a good sound, more musical to me than 
music. 

Another recent source of development in Breck appeared to 
be his sense of smell. I could never notice until the last month 
or two of his fourth year that he had an acute sense of smelL 
Taste, hearing, sight, touch, all seemed pronounced enough — 
but he made no observations about smell. True he did some- 



158 BRECKIE 

times even in his first and second year bury his nose deep in 
flowers — but that was because he saw us do it. I could not see 
that he got pleasure from their fragrance or that passing a de- 
cayed object in the woods afforded him any disgust. In fact 
he never volunteered an original comment upon either. 

Quite suddenly in the latter part of his fourth year he be^ 
gan noticing all odors and was so quick at it that often before 
I had become conscious of an olfactory impression he ex- 
claimed : "Boppie, what do I smell ?" 

This was his usual exclamation when we returned along the 
streets towards evening and odors of cooking came out of the 
houses. He couldn't always place them, his mind not con- 
sciously associating them with anything, but he had become 
curious about them. 

39 

I had begun my experimental class in Child Welfare with 
twenty-six enthusiastic students, all but two High School grad- 
uates and in the first and second year college work — which is 
all the college work given by our junior college. I was intensely 
interested in devising and planning this course as well as in 
the immense amount of reading I had to do in preparation. As 
the first semester's work pertained largely to the physical care 
of little children, the second being reserved for more general 
aspects of Child Welfare, I did a good deal of demonstrating — 
for which I needed live subjects. Baby Mary Phillips, while she 
stayed with us, supplied a perfect model for bathing and dress- 
ing and I had plenty of the best nursery equipment, while for 
modifying and pasteurizing milk and preparing diets we did not 
need an actual child to feed. 

Later in the term, when I was demonstrating the care of 
sick children, Breckie became my willing patient. I asked him 
if he would let his temperature be taken and treatments be given 
him so that I could show the girls how to do it and he agreed at 
once. Clad in his red wrapper and slippers he accompanied me 
to the classroom, but when he saw among my equipment a bowl 
of steaming water he said: "Dat's too hot, Boppie," and eyed 



BRECKIE • 159 

it anxiously. After the demonstrations, when I had taken 
him back to Juliette, I thanked him for his courtesy in helping 
us and received his "You're welcome, Boppie," in return. 

One day he saw a pair of woolen stockings belonging to me 
hanging out to dry on the white enameled clothes rack where 
his little white woolen stockings and his underwear dried. 
Both Juliette and I had omitted to ask his permission but he 
ran to her at once, saying: "Juliette, vous pouvez mettre les bas 
de Boppie sur mon wack — vous pouvez." 

He heard his father questioning me about something and evi- 
dently thought his tone too serious for he went up to him and 
said earnestly : "Boppie is not to blame." 

He was fond this December of imitating the bellow of a bull 
in words his father had taught him, like this : "I'm agoin' down 
yonder to dat man's field and get me some new gwass, new 
gwass, new gwass." 

He learned a new song, a sort of dialogue in French which he 
recited with Juliette. I overheard them going through with it 
together one day, both gravely courteous, in the characters of 
shopowner and customer_, and several times I begged them to re- 
peat it for me. It ran like this : 

"J. Madame, vendez-vous du cafe? 

B. Tirelot lot lot j'en ai du tout bon. 
J. Combien le faites-vous payer? 

B. Tirelot lot lot twois fwancs (trois francs) le kilo. 
J. C'est trop cher, Madame — 

B. Ah, mais non, Madame. 
J. Voyons, laissez-moi le cafe pour un sou. 

B. Twes (tres) bien, Madame, puis-ce-que c'est vous. 
B. (extending one hand) Voici le cafe. 

J. (ditto) Et voici le sou. 
J. and B. together — Ah, ah, ah, ah— 

Je vous recommende la bonne marchande. 
Qui vous laisse tout, tout pour un sou." 

40 

On the sixth of December a girl of sixteen, the daughter of 
one of Juliette's neighbors in the Dairy Hollow, died after a 



i6o BRECKIE 

lingering illness. Breck told me of it. He said: "Ammeline 
Wobertson is dead, Boppie. You wegwet it?" (He frequently 
carried over into English Juliette's expression "vous regrettez?" 
He heard Juliette and her neighbors discussing the death and 
mourning over the youth of the one who had died. Juliette, as he 
knevir, sat up through the night v^^ith the family, and many of 
those neighborly acts of kindness which both soothe and glorify 
our human tragedies passed before his observant eyes. The 
day of the funeral as he went down into the Dairy Hollow with 
Juliette the hearse stood before the Robertsons' gate. Juliette 
took him into her garden before the coffin was borne out but 
she told me long afterwards of the questions he had asked her 
and her rei)lies. The whole thing made a profound impression 
on Breckinridge's mind, but how deep an impression I was not 
to know until later. 

Christmas was again approaching and the air of Crescent full 
of preparations for the big tree by means of which the Crescent 
students gave clothing and toys to the poorest children of the 
city. The thing began every year with Dick's reading aloud one 
Sunday night in chapel "The Birds' Christmas Carol." Then 
the school divided into committees which did the work. Breckin- 
ridge and Brooke both attended this tree and appeared pleasantly 
impressed with its towering appearance and with an excellent 
impersonation of Santa Claus. 

In the evenings by the fire when I had my boy gathered in my 
arms I talked to him often of the meaning of Christmas and of 
the birth of the Christ Child. He had always liked a Murillo 
Madonna and Child which hung in my bedroom and sometimes he 
commented on it. This Christmas I told him the Bethlehem 
story more fully and graphically than at any previous time and 
when I came to the manger I said: "You don't know what a 
manger is, do you, Breckie?" 

"Yes, sir," he answered at once, "it's selfishness — dog in de 
manger." 

For the first time, this December, I spoke to Breck of Jesus 



BRECKIE i6i 

as other than a child, as One who had grown up but kept a love 
for little children, whom He understood and to whom He was 
kind. I told of His gathering them around Him and blessing 
them. But I gave no details of His life except those bearing on 
His childhood and His adoration of childhood. 

Brooke's letters from his mother, always frequent, but at 
Christmas time so numerous and supplemented by so many 
gay cards from other absentees who loved him as to suggest a 
Pentecostal shower, excited Breck's desire for similar favors. 
"I want some mail," he pleaded whenever Brooke became the 
recipient of an adult's share. I began handing my own Christ- 
mas cards over to him unopened and I had a little talk with him 
besides in which I explained that Brooke had letters and cards 
from his mother because he was away from her — but that Breck 
had his mother close by, which he agreed was better yet. 

Just before the holidays two of the teachers brought in a gray 
kitten — a waif — around whose neck they had tied a bow of 
lavender ribbon. I asked the boys if we should keep the kitten 
and when they decided they wanted to I suggested to Breck that 
we call her "Punky Dunk." Breck rarely failed to have a de- 
cided opinion pro or con for any suggestion. He replied at 
once: "No, I will call her Wibbon. Here, Wibbon, Wibbon." 
Later he said she might be "Wibbon Punky Dunk" — but the 
gray kitten showed a preference for the warm kitchen and the 
society of another cat residing there and soon deserted us. 

Shortly before Christmas I suggested to the boys that they 
each buy their grandmothers a present with some of their own 
pennies. The idea pleased them and we went down town on this 
errand where, after much bewildered choosing, they selected 
jumping figures. We have no real toy shops in Eureka Springs 
— but several of the stores carry a large assortment of toys at 
Christmas — wonderlands they were to Breckie, who knew noth- 
ing finer, but not so imposing to Brooke, who could remember the 
Christmas shops of New York. Brooke on the other hand 
fairly reveled in the pigs, chickens, and other charms of the 
Dairy Hollow. 

The day before Christmas Dick took the children down to the 



i62 BRECKIE 

shops and let them choose from among the moderately priced 
playthings whatever they liked best. Each boy chose a whip, a 
folding fence, and a cow bell. There they divided, Brooke 
selecting a horn and Breckie a small merry-go-round. 

Meanwhile Breck had given some of his possessions to the 
Crescent Christmas tree and an armload more, including that 
one of his two boy dolls which still bore the name of Mammy's 
first husband, to a little girl named Montana whose mother 
cooked for us during the Christmas holidays. He chose him- 
self the toys he wanted to give with only such help from me 
in deciding as he seemed to need. I was careful not to sug- 
gest the things he especially loved and which I knew were as 
strongly bound up in his associations as my dear possessions 
were in mine. 

"Dat was kind of me," he said, "to give my fings to Montana 
— " — and he said it quite as naturally as he said "Dat was kind 
of Juliette to make me dose animal cwackers, wasn't it. Bop- 
pie ?" — munching as he spoke on a fish or a bear. 

Both children hung up their stockings Christmas night by 
the chimney in my study and dashed in, clad in wrappers and 
slippers, early Christmas morning to open them. They had many 
similar things, for Aunt Jane had given them both new buckets 
and shovels, Florence balls, Juliette little aluminum cooking 
utensils, Liliane small horses and wagons, and Dick and I sets 
of sailors and boats. But from others came separate things and 
Breckie was more taken with a diminutive cannon and a whistle 
which Brooke's mother had sent for his stocking than with 
everything which fell to his own share. He did not ask for 
them or appear to think himself unfairly dealt with because he 
had no whistle or cannon, but the wistful look on his face when 
he spoke of them so acted upon Juliette that she took him down 
town at once and bought a whistle for him quite as noisy as 
Brooke's and a goodly green cannon with a handle in its rear 
which could be pulled out and snapped back by investigating lit- 
tle hands. 

In Brooke's box from his mother had come some candy which 




BRECKIE AND BROOKE 



BRECKIE 163 

went into his stocking and which Breck regarded with awe. 
Later, when he saw Brooke nibbhng the end of a pink and white 
stick, he asked : "Are you eating poison ?" 

Several new books fell to the share of both boys. My mother 
gave Breck a copy of "Uncle Remus" — such as had gladdened 
our nursery when she read to us tales, some of which had been 
told to her on the plantation in her own childhood. We thought 
Breck old enough for "Brer Rabbit," "Brer Tarrapin," "Brer 
Fox," "Ole Sis Goose," "Miss Medders" and "De Gals" and all 
the rest and he did listen attentively to bits at a time — but, like 
the stories in the "Jungle Book" and "Hollow Tree Nights and 
Days" (which came to Brooke from his mother), they were still 
too far in advance of his development for him to give them pro- 
longed attention. 

He liked better the "Story of Little Black Sambo" which 
Brooke received and a copy of the "Volland" edition of "Mother 
Goose" sent him by his Uncle Clifton. He wanted this read to 
him every evening and often several times a day as well. One 
day he opened it up before Juliette and recited rhyme after 
rhyme, slowly turning the pages. But when he came to the old 
woman in the shoe he said: "I won't wead about her. She's a 
wicked woman." 

Sometimes he sat in my lap while I read this loved book and 
laid one plump hand right over the print, then looked up at me 
and smiled to show me he knew which the print was and that I 
couldn't see to read when he covered it. He quoted from 
"Mother Goose" often. One afternoon he said to his Aunt 
Jane : "Teddy lives on fiddles and dwink and, Aunt Jane, he can 
never be quiet." 

Three Mother Goose rhymes which he seemed especially to 
like were the one about the snail who "stuck out her horns like 
a little Kyloe cow," and this one: 

Ride away, ride away, Johnny shall ride, 
And he shall have pussy cat tied to one side ; 
And he shall have little dog tied to the other, 
And Johnny shall ride to see his grandmother. 



i64 BRECKIE 

And this one: 

There was an old woman 

Sold puddings and pies; 
She went to the mill 

And dust flew in her eyes. 
While through the streets 
To all she meets 

She ever cries 

"Hot pies— Hot pies." 

I wrote in my journal: "The thought of food runs much in 
Breckie's mind. Not long ago he sat in my lap announcing that 
he would have four children when he grew up. 'And, Boppie,' 
he said, 'I will give dem plenty to eat — and I will give my wife 
plenty to eat — and I will give you plenty to eat, too, Boppie — 
and I will have plenty to eat myself.' " 

One day he was blowing his nose on a handkerchief of mine of 
which he had the use and remarked : "Dat's a big hankispuss for 
a little boy like me." 

He heard the word "camouflage" used at about this time and 
asked its meaning. His father then told him that when a girl 
painted her face that was camouflage. "Did you camouflage 
your face?" some one asked Breckie, whose cheeks were like 
a Ben Davis apple. "God camouflaged my face," he answered 
at once. 

42 

The Christmas season changed for awhile the trend of the 
Fred and Lucy and Bumbleton stories. This adventure- 
some trio happened upon a cave in the forest inhabited by a 
gnome who was wholly good natured if only you didn't waken 
him when he wanted to sleep. He had a Christmas tree in his 
cave and all sorts of wonderful toys and when the children es- 
caped in there from the sallies of the wicked radiator or the wild 
pigs they each chose something they wanted to play with while 
Bumbleton rolled a ball around with his nose. 

Now when Breckie asked me to tell him about Fwed and 
Lucy and Bumbleton he added "Tell about de gnome's cave." 



BRECKIE 165 

He often repeated these stories to Juliette — at first beginning 
them in English, because he insisted they couldn't be told in 
French, but later, when she insisted that they could be, he told 
them to her in French. 

43 

During all of the Christmas holidays the unusual bitter cold 
continued and far on into January. The children played out 
in the snow every day but one, when the temperature never 
rose above zero, with Breck's sled which held two nicely. The 
trains were running most irregularly and sometimes not at all, 
but the school re-opened on time and, amongst the other students, 
there came back Breck's cousin Foncie. She brought both lit- 
tle boys some tiny beasts from amongst which there fell to 
Breck's share a diminutive monkey. Late one snowy afternoon 
my aunt, sitting before her open fire with the children playing 
near her, heard Breck say to Brooke: "Why can't de monkey 
play wid de bear? He would be fwiendly." 

They were fond of taking possession of every chair in her 
room except the one she sat on, even casting covetous eyes upon 
that (Breck suggested in a whisper to Brooke, on one occasion, 
"Let's gwab it away fwom her!"), inverting them and then 
covering them with a shawl for caves. From such a dark recess 
she overheard them confabulating one day, and what was her 
horror at the same time to see Brooke's large wooden cannon 
which shot real balls trained upon her and to hear Breck de- 
clare bloodthirstily : "She's de Kaiser, isn't she, Bwooke?" Here 
she raised an outcry and Breckie was the first to reach her and 
soothe her by saying: "You're not de Kaiser, Aunt Jane; we 
won't shoot you. I was playing only." 

On another cold afternoon when we had to come in earlier 
than usual the children popped corn over the coals of my 
sitting room fire and ate what they had popped, honorably spit- 
ting out the hard centers of each grain. 

Breck had a wholesome respect for fire. His attitude towards 
all blazes was one of caution, but he was still so young that we 
made it a law he should never try to take down the heavy screen 



i66 BRECKIE 

from in front of our sitting room fire. Once or twice I found 
him slipping the poker in behind it and held his hand close 
enough to the flames to show him how it would feel to burn. 
One day after breakfast, when he had run out of the dining room 
ahead of his father, Dick found him poking the big wood fire in 
the great hall. To his reproachful : "Breckinridge, you might 
fall in and burn up," Breck replied: "If I did Teddy would turn 
me into a bear and pull me out." 

Teddy, in appearance as meek and unassuming a little brown 
Teddy bear as one could wish, had become a sort of omnipotent 
creature with Breckie, who exalted him on all occasions. Their 
relations were at first of a far simpler character. Teddy had 
been a loved possession since Breck's second summer, and his 
little master was quite content as he matured to call himself 
first Teddy's mother, then his father, to rock him, sing to him 
sometimes, talk with him often, and sleep with him always. But 
latterly he had begun to ascribe to Teddy superhuman char- 
acteristics. One day Brooke was talking of earthquakes and 
said he could shoot his pistol and cause an earthquake. Breck 
replied at once that Teddy could do that. Teddy, he said, could 
make the Crescent fall down and all the houses in Eureka 
Springs. He could make the houses fall in the ocean, and, re- 
ported Juliette, who told me of the conversation, "ecwaser (ecra- 
ser) tout le monde." 

"Pourquoi laissez-vous Teddy faire ga?" she asked, when she 
had listened to this deification of Teddy. 

"O, Teddy veut le faire," replied Breckinridge. "11 n'ecoute 
pas. II fait ce qu'il veut." 

He and his father were one day working together and dif- 
fered over some detail of construction about which each had 
positive convictions. Breck at once said that Teddy had told 
him to do so and so. 

"But I tell you not to," said Dick, "and I say that I am the 
boss of this job." 

"Teddy say he is de boss," replied Teddy's master, nothing 
daunted. 

I find written in my journal : "The crisis does not arise which 



BRECKIE 167 

Teddy can't meet nor the situation exist which Teddy can't dupli- 
cate or excel. When B, bless her, just before the holidays be- 
came Mrs. Paul, some remark was made to Breckie, always fond 
of her, that Dr. Paul had gotten ahead of him. He replied at 
once : "Teddy got ahead of Dr. Paul." 



44 

Soon after New Year's we began simple plans for Breck's 
fourth birthday on the twelfth, which led Brooke to describe 
the orgie of dissipation he intended to have on his birthday the 
following May. When the two children were in the Dairy Hol- 
low with Juliette one day he began planning for this May festival 
and enumerating the things he would have to eat : 

"Ice cream," he said, "and cake and candy." 

"And castor oil," supplemented Breckie, looking solemnly at 
him. 

A few days before Breck's birthday Juliette fell ill, first with 
a heavy cold and then with a frontal sinus infection which made 
it necessary for her to go to the hospital for a slight operation 
on her nose. Of course she was absent for the twelfth, but what 
hurt her most was the fact that the small drums which had been 
in town at Christmas time were all sold out and she couldn't 
get one for Breck. She had told him he was to have it on his 
birthday and although he, most reasonable of children, appeared 
satisfied with the finality of explanation that the drums were all 
sold out, she said she knew he had set his heart on one and she 
couldn't bear to have him disappointed. I told her we would 
send oflf and get one later and that he had so much he was not 
missing it now. 

I explained to him, when Juliette failed to appear one morning 
just before his birthday, that she was sick. 

"Will she die?" he asked, turning his large eyes full upon 
me. 

"Why, no, my darling," I answered, "she is not very sick. 
Why did you think she would die?" 

He answered : "Ammeline Wobertson was sick and she died." 



OF THE FIFTH YEAR— ELEVEN DAYS 

The passing of the sweetest soul 
That ever look'd with human eyes. 

— Tennyson. 



BRECKINRIDGE'S birthday morning was bitter cold but he 
went out with Aunt Jane, Brooke, and me in the snow. We 
came in at the regular hour and I gave the two boys their bath 
and crackers and milk, after which I put Breckie to sleep with 
Teddy out on his balcony, where a very icy Boreas tried vainly 
to reach his snugly enveloped little friend. It was only after his 
nap that the real celebrations for the day began. 

The children had dinner as usual except that for dessert there 
was the birthday cake. Mrs. Jordan had made it, not the sponge 
of the year before but of war flour, covered with powdered 
sugar. I asked Breckie if he wanted me to light it before 
bringing it in or would he rather stick the candles on and light 
it himself. Naturally he chose to do it himself. He stuck the 
four candles on in their holders and then, his little hands trem- 
bling with eagerness, struck a match and lighted the candles. It 
took more than one match, for the lighter was not expert and 
had a wholesome dread of burnt fingers. 

After we had all stood around the cake admiringly, came the 
added joy of blowing out the candles and cutting the cake. This 
Breckie did himself, with a little help, and then handed the slices 
around, beginning with the ladies and ending with his father and 
Brooke. Then he chose a comfortably spacious piece for himself 
and sat down in the chair that had been his Uncle Clifton's to eat 
it — his expression one of unmixed satisfaction. 

When the dinner trays had been cleared away I brought out 
two bowls of warm water and Japanese flowers, presented by 
cousin Foncie, which delighted the children as they opened up 
before their eyes. Next I handed around (and there were 
enough for us all) a new variety of soap bubble pipe — and when 
this pleasure had been exhausted I produced two little books, 

171 



172 BRECKIE 

all by the same loving donor, with pictures to paste in them — one 
for each boy — and the pasting began. 

Breckie's special birthday presents from the rest of us were 
also given him. First two dozen large new flat blocks, whose 
addition to the basket made it so heavy that Breck could scarcely 
lift it, in gay colored boxes. We handed one to each little boy 
to open. Next several new books, among them two his father 
and I gave him which we had had Brentano import from France. 
Both were illustrated by Georges Delaw — the one a collection of 
mythological tales, and the other the immortal Contes de Per- 
rault. Breck had these books such a short time before leaving 
them that I can't say what impression they would have made 
on his mind. I read him "Le Petit Chaperon Rouge" and "Le 
Chat Botte," which he liked well enough, but not as yet in the 
adoring way with which he greeted Mother Goose and such 
jolly old French equivalents as "Le Roi Dagobert" and "La 
Legende de Saint Nicholas." 

The day closed with a run out of doors and the usual bedtime 
stories. Weeks afterwards Brooke sometimes said reminiscently 
to his grandmother : "Didn't we do beautiful things on Breckin- 
ridge's birthday?" 



The morning after Breck's birthday as soon as he waked, and 
while he still lay in his covers with Teddy, he asked me if a 
four-year-old boy was old enough to eat pie. Upon my replying 
in the negative he said: "Teddy made me a pie, but I didn't 
eat only de apple part. Teddy ate de wooden part." 

The thirteenth was Sunday, with Juliette still sick, but I per- 
suaded Aunt Jane to go to her church and let me scamper out 
in the snow with the two little boys. As we were returning to 
Crescent along the ridge of the mountain Breck suddenly an- 
nounced : "Boppie, I don't want to die." 

I turned to gaze at him in astonishment. There he stood, 
firmly planted in the snow, an embodiment of sturdy childhood, 
informed with life in every hardy fibre of his make-up. How 
could I divine that in less than twelve days he would be dead ? 



BRECKIE 173 

No psychical sense in me was stirred, I had no prophetic pre- 
monitions. On the contrary my first almost unconscious exclama- 
tion, as I looked down at him and smiled, was : "But, my 
darling, you aren't going to die." 

Then I recollected myself and asked : "Why don't you want 
to die?" 

"Ammeline Wobertson died," he replied at once, "and dey put 
her in de gwound." 

"O, my baby," I cried, deeply moved, "it was only her body 
that they put in the ground and she didn't want it any more. 
She had left it behind her. She did not need it any more 
than you do the clothes that are too small for you. She 
went . . ." 

"To heaven," said Brooke. 

"To de seashore of endless worlds," said Breckinridge. 

With all my heart in my voice I tried to put before these lit- 
tle children a vision of that principle of life "which does not 
admit of death." I reminded Breckie that his sister had died 
and what happy things we said about her. I told him again of 
the little dogs he had loved, and soon the thought of the baby 
and the dogs romping together wrought its old charm upon his 
imagination. But he hadn't finished with the subject. "Will 
you go dere, Boppie ?" he asked. 

"Pidgy, darling," I answered him, "it's likely Boppie would go 
ahead of you — but she doesn't want to go and she doesn't see why 
she should have to go before you are a man grown up and don't 
need her here. She isn't going to be separated from you ever 
if she can help it. If you ever do go ahead of her she is com- 
ing to you just as soon as she can. And everybody goes there, 
you know, some day. Nobody is separated long." 

"Will my mother be there?" asked Brooke, "and my Jam- 
mie?" 

"Will gweat f aver be dere ?" asked Breckie, meaning his great- 
grandfather Breckinridge, of whose picture in his uniform of a 
Confederate general he was fond. 

I answered them as the charioteer once did Prince Sidhartha, 
that everybody not now living had died and that those of us 



174 BRECKIE 

who lived would all taste of death. But I bore in concluding 
on the aliveness of being dead and the happy times people 
could go on having wherever they went. I could not give 
descriptions and the children did not ask for them. When I told 
them they would be happy I knew I had said enough, since both 
were happy children and would naturally translate the idea of 
a happy condition anywhere into such pleasing images as their 
lives had experienced and their minds could comprehend. 

When we had finished talking about it and were nearing the 
house Breckie came close to me and, slipping his little hand in its 
worsted glove into mine in the way he so often did, said: "Bop- 
pie, I love you." 



We had expected to inoculate the new students with the 
typhoid and para-typhoid vaccine that afternoon and I had got- 
ten out a small electric sterilizer of Dr. Bolton's which we used 
for boiling up the needles. But the doctor telephoned that his 
little daughter Phyllis was too ill with pneumonia for him to be 
willing to leave her and the inoculations were deferred. Breckie 
had observed the sterilizer on top of a bookcase and with an 
anxious look at me asked : "Are we going to be stuck ?" He 
was relieved at once when I told him that my soldier had finished 
with inoculations for some years to come. 

Dick had planned to take both boys in his car that afternoon to 
get them out of the way of our little clinic, and when we didn't 
hold a clinic he took them anyhow to give me a couple of 
hours in which to get caught up with some important Red 
Cross nursing correspondence. They left the car about a mile 
out of town, he told me, on the site of the great highway soon 
to be constructed, and went on foot to a hog farm — both children 
collecting such treasures of nature as the snow-covered ground 
afforded en route. When they retraced their steps towards the 
place where they had left the car somebody dropped the sup- 
position like a bomb in the group — suppose they didn't find it 
there? However, when they rounded a bend in the road it came 
in sight and Breck cried out : "Dere it is !" 



BRECKIE 175 

The next three days continued cold — but ideally clear and in- 
vigorating. Our little boys coasted every day, especially down 
the road known as the Crescent grade. No automobiles were 
running and only a few wagons loaded with wood or coal inter- 
rupted their sport. Brooke sat in front on the sled and guided, 
while Breckie, with his serious play-expression, seated himself 
behind and planted his goloshes well up out of the snow on 
either side. I gave shoves or ran ahead with the rope to get a 
good start for them. Then the coasting began — only to terminate 
after a few feet in the snow drifts on one side or the other of 
the road. Sometimes I pulled them both on the sled or one of 
them pulled the other. Usually when the time came for going 
in and the children seemed a bit tired and fretful I enlivened 
the last few hundred yards of our way back with a Fred and 
Lucy and Bumbleton story. 

These three immortals had lately taken to encountering floods 
of water and being carried off on driftwood and landed on tiny 
islands. Just as starvation would seem to be staring them in 
the face a basket or a small boat came floating by and in it 
they found prunes, bread, butter, sometimes even bottles of milk 
like those in which I pasteurized the two quarts of milk drunk 
daily by the two Bs. This unexpected succor, floated down to 
them often by the friendly gnome from the mouth of his cave, 
consumed and want again staring them in the face, suddenly one 
of them spied a white sail in the offing and Roger, like a glorious 
bird, came swooping to their rescue, or else they heard a sharp 
putt, putt, putt and Roger in a motorboat skudded across the 
water and took them in. 

On the morning of the sixteenth there came an unexpected 
pleasure. One of the grocers' assistants in town, inspired by 
the protracted reign of snow and ice, made some runners for the 
body of his delivery wagon, hitched a horse to the combination 
and glided about town with his deliveries on the only sleigh I had 
ever seen in this region. This dazzling object dashed past us 
one day and I had made up my mind what I should do if we 
met it again. Sure enough on the morning of the sixteenth here 
it came and I hailed it, asking the good-natured driver if our 



176 BRECKIE 

two little boys could not climb in with the groceries and take a 
ride. The words were hardly out of my mouth and permission 
had not yet left his before they had scrambled in and settled 
themselves in part on the seat beside him, in part among his pro- 
visions. He touched up his horse and away they glided over the 
snow on what was for Breck at least an entirely novel adven- 
ture. 

Aunt Jane and I followed, dragging the sled, to join company 
with our enchanted boys at the last delivery in that neighborhood. 
It was a wonderful experience and Breck sang with me "Jingle 
Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle All the Way" when I was getting him 
ready for his nap. Another chapter had closed in his book of 
Happy Day House. 



Word reached us one afternoon this week of the death by 
pneumonia at a camp in Arizona of a young cousin In the regu- 
lar army, Lieutenant Breckinridge Ten Eycke, my father's great- 
nephew — the first of our family to give up his life since we 
entered the war. I was reading to the children before Aunt 
Jane's fire when my mother came in with this sad news. I had 
Breckie on my lap. Instinctively I held him closer while I 
tried to keep back the tears, so that he would see the glory 
rather than the pain in the explanation I gave him of a soldier's 
death. 



The morning of Thursday the seventeenth Breckie woke in his 
accustomed splendid health, drank his orange juice and later 
ate his breakfast of oatmeal and milk and bread and butter with 
his father and Brooke with his usual full appetite. Afterwards 
Aunt Jane and I took the children out and they played as they 
had been doing at coasting on the sled down the Crescent grade. 
Often they tumbled off in the snow without feeling the least 
inconvenience or pain. 

At the bottom of the hill I pulled them both on the sled and 
while I was toiling along I said "fiddlesticks" in reply to a 



BRECKIE 177 

foolish comment of theirs. I heard Breck, sitting very com- 
placent and fat on the sled, in his blue military coat and soldier's 
helmet, say to his cousin: "She's fiddlesticks herself, isn't she 
Bwooke?" 

Everybody seemed very cheerful and well until we had climbed 
the mountain and were nearly home. Then we remembered that 
we had to stop at Mrs. Jordan's for bread. We turned into 
the little side street, much encumbered in its snow drifts with 
the sled, and I suggested to Breck that he stay there with Aunt 
Jane while I ran to the house for the bread. To my surprise 
Breckinridge began to cry in what seemed like the most unrea- 
sonable manner. I left him with Aunt Jane talking soothingly, 
saw Mrs. Jordan, got the bread and fresh eggs, and returned to 
find Breckie now crying loudly and beyond explanations. I knew 
of course that there was a physiological cause back of this un- 
wonted outburst, though how grave a one I could not suspect, 
and my first thought was that he must be over tired and sleepy, 
I attempted to soothe him, but he wouldn't let me, crying out : 
"Boppie, I am ashamed of you." Then, as we moved on to- 
wards Crescent I tried to divert him with Fred and Lucy and 
Bumbleton, only to receive the retort: "Don't speak to me, 
Boppie, I am vexed wif you. I am ashamed of you." 

I realized that he was not in a frame of mind to listen to 
me then but I thought that after he had slept we could talk to- 
gether and come to an explanation of his exceptional conduct, and 
what had led to it. He had quieted somewhat before we reached 
the college but was still disposed to be contentious. As the chil- 
dren were undressing and I ran the water for their baths I re- 
marked upon having overlooked weighing Breck on his birthday 
and said I must do it that afternoon without fail, and Brooke 
too. 

Whereupon Breckie, not ordinarily in the least self-seeking, ex- 
claimed : "Weigh me first." 

"There is a verse in the Bible," I replied too sententiously, 
"about the man who wants to come first being last." 

"In my Bible," said Breck, "it say weigh I first and Bwooke 
afterwards." 



178 BRECKIE 

However, when he had had his warm bath and warm milk 
and graham cracker, and had been cuddled and loved a little 
with fond endearments, he seemed to feel soothed and went to 
sleep with Teddy out on his balcony in the cold, clean air. 

He woke while I was at dinner and Blanche had him nearly 
dressed when I came up stairs. I saw nothing unusual in him 
and proceeded to get his and Brooke's dinner ready for two-fif- 
teen. It consisted of rare tenderloin steak, baked potato, aspara- 
gus tips, with a cup of milk and a baked apple for dessert — 
such a dinner as Breck usually attacked with an irreproachable 
appetite. To my complete astonishment he refused it. He did 
not even want to taste it. I asked him if he felt badly and he 
said no — but naturally I did not urge his eating. 

A little later he began to vomit and said that his stomach felt 
sick. I told him to put his hand on the place and he laid it over 
the pit of his stomach. I was not at all uneasy though per- 
plexed as to what could have upset his perfect digestion. It 
had been arranged that Blanche was to take the children out 
that afternoon so that Aunt Jane and I could get some impor- 
tant letters written — but I sent her off without Breckie and 
dropped everything to take care of him. I suggested a dose of 
castor oil and he replied at once : 

"Boppie, I will take it like a soldier." Many hours later it 
was a relief to my mind to remember that he vomited it at 
once as well as a second dose for which he begged, thinking it 
would make him feel better. 

This vomiting did not come quickly. He always had time to 
run to the bath room. I ran with him and supported his fore- 
head, and once, when he got there ahead of me, I found him 
holding his own forehead with one little brown hand. He rinsed 
his mouth carefully every time afterwards and sometimes said: 
"Dat's better, Boppie." 

He did not seem to be in the least pain or to be ill — but was 
listless and indifferent to his usual pleasures. I suggested his 
blocks, but he wasn't interested in them. Then I tried books. 
He climbed in my lap and I began to read the Mother Goose 
rhymes for which his appetite was usually insatiable. But after 



BRECKIE 179 

I had read only two he pushed the book away, saying: "Dat's 
all, Boppie." 

All he wanted was to sit quietly in my lap with his head on 
my shoulder or, as he put it: "Boppie, I want to lie in your 
arms," and so we sat most of the afternoon. Once when his 
nausea seemed to have cleared up I suggested that we go down- 
stairs and get weighed on the big scales. He consented, but 
they were locked up in the store room. So he didn't get weighed. 
The sight of Joe's plumber's fire in the pantry and Joe's work 
with it excited only a flickering interest. 

I then brought him back, his little feet climbing the familiar 
stairs for the last time had we but known it, and undressed 
him, putting on his night clothes with the "pattes d'ours" and 
his fleecy red wrapper and Puss-in-Boots slippers. Then I held 
him again until supper time. I got Brooke's supper ready and 
ofifered Breck milk, but he took only a swallow or two before 
pushing it away. 

During the remainder of this first evening of an illness that 
seemed so light and was to be so terrible I sat and held him, 
until it was time to lay him in his little indoor bed by mine, 
and as we sat we ran over in imagination some of our loved 
fancies. He was the little woolly wolf and I the mother woolly 
wolf in the cave, he the cub bear and I the mother bear in the 
hollow tree, he Tweet Tweet and I the mother bird — but mostly 
he was Jimmie, very cuddly and loving, and I Sheepblossom who 
petted him. 

When I had put him to bed I sat in the adjoining room writ- 
ing in my journal. I wrote : "My Breckie has not been well 
to-day, nauseated — so rare in his hearty Hfe." I was not in the 
least uneasy about him. Although digestive disturbances were 
rare with him he had been nauseated before and at times equally 
without apparent cause. I recalled to mind and told my mother 
and Aunt Jane of a day in his third year when he had vomited 
off and on all day and had had no other symptom, not even a 
temperature or weakened pulse, appearing to be affected just 
about as he was now. The thing had cleared up of itself during 
the night and the next day found him as well as usual. Never- 



i8o BRECKIE 

theless I would have had the doctor look him over, as I had done 
on previous occasions of digestive disturbance, if Dr. Bolton's 
little daughter had not been dangerously ill just at this time 
and his mind and time wholly given over to her needs. 

On the night of the seventeenth Breck did not rest well, wak- 
ing several times to vomit or just to call out to me. I reached 
him in an instant. Upon one such occasion I said out loud: 
"Thank you, God, for giving me this little boy." 

"You're welcome," came the response in a high-pitched small 
voice and then Breckie said in his natural tones : "Dat was God 
speaking in your heart." 

A moment later he added : "Boppie, I love God." 

At another time when I laid him down and was caressing him 
I exclaimed: "Such a dear little boy, such a good little boy." 
He said: "Boppie, I twy to do wight." (O, my imperishable 
child, the sustaining power which now raises me is just a simple 
trying to do right.) Often he pulled me down with "Boppie, I 
want to kiss you." 

I went early to bed and we slept fitfully, for his nausea con- 
tinued at intervals and he often woke and seemed in discom- 
fort. About one in- the morning he cried out for the first time 
that he was in pain — that his stomach hurt him. I put my hand 
over his abdomen and found on pressure that the pain and ten- 
derness were both in the lower right abdomen. I took his tem- 
perature but he still had no fever, pulse but slightly quickened. 
The pain passed almost at once but I called his father and left 
Breckie with him while I went down to telephone the family 
physician and give him the symptoms. I told Breckie where I 
was going and why and when his father came in he vouchsafed 
the information : "I am not vewy well." 

Dr. Bolton gave me directions and when he came later in the 
morning said that he would get the operating room ready at the 
little hospital so that he could operate at any time in the day 
if it seemed best. He could not make a clear diagnosis of any- 
thing on examination — although he suspected appendicitis more 
than anything else. The nausea meanwhile had stopped and the 
pain did not recur. Breckie seemed better. There were no 



BRECKIE i8i 

pronounced symptoms of any kind — only a local tenderness and 
a temperature and pulse slightly elevated. 

Dr. Bolton told me to call him up every hour or two during 
the day and that early in the afternoon if not sooner he would 
probably decide whether or not to intervene surgically. 

So Breckie and I passed a day together which I recall as hav- 
ing been inexpressibly precious in its early hours. He did not 
appear to be in any particular discomfort, and I sat by his bed 
with my head down by his as we both loved to be. I had given 
him a flat little pillow I always used and I said : "This four-year- 
old boy is big enough for a pillow. You can have this one, 
preciousness. Boppie gives it to you to keep. It's yours." His 
face lit up with a pleased smile and thereafter until he died he 
used it constantly. 

One time when I had to leave him for a few moments and my 
mother had taken my place he asked her: "What are you knit- 
ting, Hoho ?" 

"Helmets," she answered, "for the soldiers." 

"Did you knit a helmet for me?" he then asked her, and when 
she replied how happy it had made her to do it he said: "Fank 
you, Hoho, for dat helmet. It keeps my neck warm." 

The latter hours of the day were hard. Although he had been 
given salines since two in the morning and had retained them 
all, Breck's thirst became excessive and he begged piteously for 
water — "a little only." I telephoned the doctor and he said that 
when he returned Breck could have water, since if he were better 
he might safely be allowed it in small quantities, and if he were 
not he could have a drink before his operation anyway. 

I came back and told him he could have a drink as soon as 
the doctor returned and thereafter my little soldier, reasonable 
even in the pangs of his terrible thirst, ceased begging, and 
began instead to ask when Dr. Bolton would come. "O, Boppie, 
don't you hear his automobile?" "Isn't it time for him to come?" 
"Telephone him to come and give me water." 

That was an agonizing afternoon for Breck and me. But never 
once did he try to climb out of bed, or even to raise himself, 
or make any effort whatsoever to get a drink. Even when I 



i82 BRECKIE 

stepped into adjoining rooms I knew he was to be trusted. 
"Boppie, I pwomise you I won't get up." A promise, my four- 
year-old, to be trusted unto death. 

We spent the most of these leaden hours with my head down 
by Breck's as he liked to have it and both of us saying over rather 
often that we loved each other. The pain returned suddenly 
before the doctor's visit. I telephoned him and when he came he 
said it was essential to operate without delay and for us to get 
Breck to the little hospital at once. 

He went to this hospital and to the operating table in his 
father's arms. I prepared him for the operation and he made 
no objection to having his painful side shaved after I explained 
to him that it was one of the things to do towards getting him 
well. When we took him into the operating room he cast rather 
a frightened look at the instruments and said: "Are dose fings 
to hurt me?" I reassured him and then told him that all he 
would have to do would be to breathe in a bad smell, that he 
wouldn't like it but that it was something to help him get well 
and that he could take it like a soldier. His only reply to this 
was: "I will smell it like a soldier," and he did. Not until he 
was partly under the ether did he struggle or cry out, for the 
reasoning habit of mind common to him did not fail him even 
here. 

I stayed with him until he was anaesthetized and then left the 
room, only to be summoned back a little later and shown where 
the trouble lay. Not in the appendix — but so much more 
dreadful — intussusception, an abdomen already full of pus, gen- 
eral peritonitis. 

When he came down from the operating room he was con- 
scious and looked a little wild-eyed. "Boppie, Boppie," he said, 
"let's go home." I soothed and quieted him. 

Then began our fight of nearly five days' duration with its 
alternations of hope and sinking fears — "the hopes and fears of 
all the years" — a fight in which we were to lose out at the 
last. We had two excellent nurses, both of whom had nursed 
at the college and whom I knew well. Miss Riley took day duty. 
The other nurse, who took night duty, Miss Booth, came from 



BRECKIE 183 

Fort Smith and was twenty hours in reaching us owing to the 
heavy snow and consequent derangement of traffic on the rail- 
roads. I helped them both, resting at such intervals as Breck 
seemed at his best. The doctor seldom left the place and never 
for more than two or three hours. He told my mother, who 
stayed with Dick and me, that Breckie had the strongest powers 
of resistance of any child he had ever treated — more like a ten 
than a four-year-old boy. To me he said: "He has the finest 
constitution I ever saw and is putting up a wonderful fight." 

But I think the thing which impressed both doctor and nurses 
more even than his vitality was his attitude of mind — its sweet 
reasonableness at all times, even the most painful. To this we 
were accustomed but others found it extraordinary in a four- 
year-old child and it was this which caused the doctor to tell me : 
"He is a marvelous child." 

When his wound was dressed for the first time they fastened 
his hands and arms with a sheet. But I told them it wasn't neces- 
sary, that he wouldn't touch the sterile towels or the wound if 
they explained to him about them. To Breck I said: "The 
doctor has made a little window in your abdomen, darling, to let 
out some germs and microbes and bacteria which made you sick. 
Now he must clean out this window and you mustn't touch while 
he does it." He replied that he would not and I stayed at the 
head of his bed, gently holding his hands or petting and kissing 
his forehead. 

In this supreme crisis of the littk child's life he kept the 
simple ideal he had cherished every common day — that of being 
a brave soldier. Many a weak and selfish desire, many a dread 
of small pains and ills, had he sacrificed in acquiring an attitude 
of mind now so habitual that almost instinctively he "twied to do 
wight." Not once in all the days and nights of his desperate 
illness did he cry, or whine, or fret. Not once was he anything 
but amenable to reason. When his wound had to be dressed 
again and he objected the doctor said : "It's necessary, Breck." 

"O," said Breckie, and made no further objection. 

After his hypodermics, to which he submitted without a 



i84 BRECKIE 

shadow of resistance, he generally asked : "Was I bwave as a 
soldier?" 

Once he said, thinking of Breckinridge Ten Eycke : "My 
cousin died, what was a bwave soldier," 

Once he cried out when something hurt him very much and 
Dr. Bolton said : "You weren't really crying, Breck. You were 
just squealing." 

"Yes," he answered, pleased to be restored to his ideal, "I was 
des squealing." 

I am sure that he must have felt very ill and have been in 
frequent pain — but when the doctor asked : "How do you feel, 
Breck?" he generally answered: "All wight." Once I heard 
him reply : "O, not vewy well." 

On the first night of his illness he recalled that I had told him 
the doctor's little daughter had pneumonia and asked: "Dr. 
Bolton, how is Phyllis?" 

His individuality stood out almost until the end. When he 
vomited he sometimes wanted one pus basin, a curved one of 
Miss Riley's, and sometimes another — a little round basin we had 
brought with us. When he was allowed the small amounts of 
water with which his intense thirst was at intervals assuaged 
(O, my baby, did it make for the grandeur of your evolving 
soul that you should have been tortured thus? Ah, but you 
must have grown a thousand years — ) he always had a prefer- 
ence in what he was to take it. "My little silver cup — " "A 
long glass wif a tube — " "De wed and white glass and a 
spoon — " "De little boat — " When I said once: "A drink of 
hot water is good for little sick boys," he repeated it, looking 
pleased. 

Once he became interested in the proctoclysis with its tubing 
and I promised him that when he was better he should have it 
to hold and play with if he liked. On another occasion he told 
me his nail was "bwoken" and to trim it with the little scissorc. 
Sick as he was few things escaped his observation. He noticed 
for instance that his arm was scrubbed with a bit of cotton before 
and after each hypodermic and reminded his nurse to "wash" 
his arm. 



BRECKIE 185 

Upon one occasion I heard him pronounce an r distinctly — 
the first time he had done it. He said "already" and the r sound 
in the word was plain. 

Two or three times with me he became alive to the flood of ten- 
derness habitually passing between us in better days. Once, 
when I bent over him and whispered: "This is Sheepblossom," 
he answered, "Dis is Jimmie." Once he asked me to lay my head 
down by his, and once he looked up with a flash of his old 
radiance, saying: "Boppie, I want to kiss you." Then I felt 
his lips brushing my cheek. 

On the morning of the fourth day we were encouraged. Up 
until then he had held his own but on that morning certain 
favorable symptoms led us to believe that he was doing a little 
more than that. I said to him: "Pidgy, darling, when you are 
better Boppie is going to get you a drum." 

He looked at me seriously and replied: "De dwums are all 
saled." 

"I know, my blessing," I said, "the ones here are sold and that 
was why you didn't have one on your birthday. But Boppie is 
going to send off to a big city and have them send you a drum — 
all the way from a big city." 

Somehow, though it's only a little thing, it hurts me to remem- 
ber that he never had that drum. It's the only promise I ever 
made him which I couldn't keep. 

His uncle Carson had sent a draft to buy him his Christmas 
present and it came during his illness. My mother went in to 
him the morning of this fourth day and told him about it, saying 
that when he was well he should take the draft to the bank and 
get money for it and then take the money down town and buy 
whatever he liked best in the shops. He looked pleased and he 
even smiled. Just before she left him she said : "May I kiss 
your hand, Breckinridge?" And for response he held it out to 
her. 

About the middle of this day when we had been most hopeful 
and all the symptoms were growing favorable, except possibly 
the pulse, his poisoned, tired heart began to give way. If the 
infection had been a little less virulent, or a little less general. 



i86 BRECKIE 

he would not have succumbed to it. As it was he grew slowly- 
worse that afternoon and with the coming of night hope folded 
her wings and prepared to take flight. 

He had been so stimulated that in spite of morphine he was 
fearfully excited, and very tired from all the things we were 
constantly doing to restore him and from a little nervous cough 
that set in that last night. Even then he did not complain or 
fret, only once again he said to me : "Boppie, let's go home." It 
seemed to me that he thought, poor child, that if we were back 
in the old familiar surroundings things would be with him as they 
were before. 

It became imperative for him to sleep. But he could not and 
always he kept picking at his coverings. At last I leaned over the 
head of his bed and, while the cool air blew in through an open 
window from the snowy night outside, I pressed the ice cap 
filled with snow against his hot little head and began talking 
in a low voice such soothing nonsense as formerly delighted 
him. 

"Sandman is coming with a great big bucket of sand to put 
my baby to sleep. Boreas, blow on the baby and put him to 
sleep. All the little stars have gone to sleep in the sky. The 
little woolly wolf is curled up asleep in the cave with the mother 
woolly wolf, the little cub bear lies asleep in the hollow tree, the 
birdies are sleeping in their nests, the little tree frogs have gone 
to sleep in the trees. The Sandman threw sand at the little 
tree frogs and put them to sleep. Jimmie is asleep in his bed and 
Breckinridge is going to sleep too in his bed, for the Sandman 
has come with a great big bucket of sand to put my baby to 
sleep. Boreas blow on the baby and he will sleep." 

I talked like this for a long time and my darling slept at last, 
except nearly always for that restless picking at the covers with 
his left hand. 

Those were the last hours before hope left us altogether. I 
don't know just when, but some time before dawn I began to 
read in the sorrowful faces of my sister nurses and from the 
tears which stood in the doctor's eyes what was all too plainly 
written on the gallant little figure that lay before me dying. 



BRECKIE 187 

Then I put my head down by his in the old familiar way and 
whispered : "This little baby will soon be well." 

He died at five minutes after three in the afternoon — ^but I had 
lost track of time as I sat by him through the hours. Towards 
the last he was allowed to have all the fresh snow he wanted and 
so long as he could swallow I fed it to him, first with a spoon 
and then with my fingers. While he could speak he asked for it 
and seemed eager for it while he was conscious of anything. You 
little boy, who never passed one of your mountain springs with- 
out drinking, have you drunk of the river of life freely and shall 
you thirst now no more ? 

He wanted to be turned from one side to the other — but doing 
it hurt him. However he did not fret or complain but played his 
part of brave soldier so long as conscious life remained to 
him. 

There followed the unconscious hours when he lay with one 
chubby hand under his cheek as I had so often seen him in his 
sleep. Like so many years they seemed to me, those hours, sitting 
there with the sword that was piercing through my own soul 
also. It came over me, as I sat there, how truly he had spoken 
when he said he "twied to do wight" and how hard it must have 
been at four years. But he had measured up to the magnitude 
of it. He had done right as he saw it. He had taken all the 
unaccustomed suffering terminating his happy life without ques- 
tioning why it had come, because he believed it was right for a 
soldier to be brave. 

I felt as if I were in the presence of a great law that had 
been obeyed and, further, that the laws of pain accepted and used 
might become a force as mighty as, for instance, the laws of 
fire which bless or burn according as we understand and obey 
them. With Breckinridge we had ever tried to teach him obedi- 
ence to law, not blind obedience to us who only deserved his re- 
spect when we too obeyed the laws we interpreted to him. Now 
the little child had learned his lesson and I knew that only by 
becoming like him could I enter with him into the kingdom of 
heaven. 

I decided then, in those vaster reaches of the mind where my 



i88 BRECKIE 

spirit seemed to be brushing his, that the Power which had 
placed him here had a right to withdraw him — a right exercised 
perhaps not the less purposefully because it operated through 
natural law — and that if I could accept the action of law as I 
understood it I might become worthy of being the mother of 
my son. When I came to this conclusion I leaned over to the 
unconscious child and told him that I too would try to do what 
was right. 

By his bed at the last besides the doctor and trained nurses 
and his father and me were his grandfather and grandmother, 
Aunt Jane, his nurse Juliette, his cousin Florence, and those loyal 
friends of his — Camille and B. These were the people on our 
side, the human group, all that we, restrained by the limitations 
of our senses, could perceive; but who shall say that a valiant 
host of the heroes he worshiped were not present also to 
welcome my Greatheart when he passed over to the other 
side? 



AFTERWARDS 

Hence in a season of calm weather 

Though inland far we be 
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 

Which brought us hither, 
Can in a moment travel thither, 
And see the children sport upon the shore. 
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 

— Wordsworth. 



AFTERWARDS 

WE, my father, mother, Dick, and I, carried the little body 
down to Fort Smith for burial by the side of our baby 
girl. All morning Thursday it lay in the home where he was 
bom while inexpressibly tender friends gathered around us. 
Juliette had chosen the clothes to put on him — one of his white 
and blue middy suits and the sandals in which he had tramped 
about the hills through the summer. In his arms I laid the Teddy 
Bear that had slept with him for over two years. 

He was not much less chubby, and though I had cut close his 
curly hair because of the fever and the gorgeous red had gone out 
of his cheeks and the radiance from his face and the eyes were 
closed and dead, yet it seemed a part of Breckie still which lay 
there — and this part I knew that I should never see again. 
Precious little body, eager little hands and feet, — I am glad I 
gave them freedom while I had them, if Breckinridge no longer 
needs them in his development then let them, go. 

He lay, with the flowers massed all about and the Teddy Bear 
in his arms, under the Sully portrait of his great, great, great 
grandfather Breckinridge who was a good and useful man in his 
day. I never saw marked likenesses in Breckie to any one — 
but something in the shape of the forehead as he lay there re- 
sembled the picture looking down at him and I was proud when 
I thought of their meeting that Breckie, like the soldier cousin 
just preceding him, had measured up to the best traditions of his 
race. 

"Mammy" came, his negro mammy, and sobbed in Dick's arms. 
She thought her baby had grown "awful long" since the days 
when she nursed him. 

We had no services of any kind in our home or at the grave. 
God didn't need to be told about Breckie. Friends carried 
the little casket across the grass and, with Boreas blowing over 

191 



192 BRECKIE 

him and the sunshine in which his short life had been spent 
sparkling down on the patches of snow, — with only the wind 
he loved speaking and the sunshine listening, — this child of the 
open air was given back to the Immensity from which he 
came. 

On his grave and that of our girl baby the flowers were 
heaped, and there, on the high ground above the Arkansas river, 
facing its lofty bluffs, there stands my nursery. Let Boreas 
blow ever so wildly he cannot waken the little sleepers in my 
nursery, and I know that, whatever the ultimate outcome, my 
human children are dead. But sometimes I feel that subcon- 
sciously perhaps I come in touch with them and that even now, 
while one part of me sits crushed beyond the sound of sweetest 
voices and pattering feet, a larger and better part is playing 
with Breckie and his sister on that seashore of endless worlds 
where the children meet with shouts and songs and dances. 



CONCLUSION 

O sister, sister, thy first-begotten! 

The hands that cling and the feet that follow, 
The voice of the child's blood crying yet, 

Who hath remembered me? Who hath forgotten? 
Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow, 

But the world will end when I forget. 

— Sivinburne. 



SPRING has come again to the Ozark mountains. March with 
warm light has dispelled the bitter winter. The red bad and 
dogwood are in bloom in the forests and underfoot the wild 
flowers. In my garden the crocuses have come and gone and the 
jonquils and yellow tulips are blooming. 

The hens in the Dairy Hollow are sitting on their nests and 
the Belgian hares have new young ones. The process of smoking 
the black and white pig is long since completed. On many hill- 
sides are women picking dandelion greens and Juliette, with 
Brooke, is among them. The great tree the Carnis bought for 
firewood has been cut down — but Juliette says that she could not 
see its fall because of her tears. She and I are making Breckie's 
garden and planting it as he had planned. "Le pauvre petit," 
she says, "il faisait tant de projets." 

There is not a rod of ground within miles over which I walk 
where his little feet have not trudged, not a spring at which his 
sunny face was not turned to drink, not a creeping thing, hardly 
a stone or bush or tree, or puff of wind which does not recall 
the gallant-hearted child who fraternized with them. At night 
on his balcony I look at the moon and stars thinking: "These 
perhaps we hold in common even yet." 

And still, although my human heart is so broken as not to 
make the fragments worth gathering together again, my mind has 
accepted Breckie's death from the first and is not tortured about 
him at all. 

It is otherwise of other deaths. No one has really been a 
mother who has not yearned over children everywhere. Breck- 
inridge's happy childhood has passed indeed but left only golden 
memories. The brief suffering at the end cannot obliterate the 
joyous whole where one day of delight succeeded another in his 
fairyland. 

But what of other children — the majority of all children? 

195 



196 BRECKIE 

What of childhood? From the desolated shores of Armenia to 
the Balkan mountains, from the plains of Poland to the Belgian 
and French coast and over at last to the streets of our great 
cities and the farms of our remoter hills travels that cry of 
childhood which throughout the ages has been the cry of 
martyrdom. This my reason cannot accept — this tortures the 
devout in my soul. 

Is there not wrong too bitter for atoning? 

What are these desperate and hideous years? 
Hast thou not heard Thy whole creation groaning, 

Sighs of the bondsmen, and the children's tears? 

There is a work beside which all other strikes me as puerile — 
the work which seeks to raise the status of childhood every- 
where, so that finally from pole to pole of this planet all of the 
little ones come into that health and happiness which is their 
due. If every one who had ever loved a child would but do his 
part this might come to pass. What if we do not understand? 
What if we cannot be held responsible for the way God has 
ordered His world? There lies nevertheless deep in the heart 
of every child lover a feeling of responsibility which will not 
let him put the thing aside. If God cherishes His little ones only 
in my breast, says the child lover, He cherishes them there, and 
I fight for them — fight until that ancient saying has come true, 
until He shall gather the Lambs ... in His bosom, and gently 
lead those that are with young. And when the crooked paths 
are made straight and the waste places smooth it will be time 
enough for me to understand. 



One morning, some days after Breckie's death, Brooke said 
reminiscently to his grandmother : "Once when we were coming 
back from the Dairy Hollow Breckinridge said that he was a 
bird and could fly." After a moment he added reflectively : "He 
was always falling down, but he said that he could fly." 

Such was my Greatheart. Even so did his soaring spirit 
overreach the limitations of its embodiment. "He was always 
falling down — but he said that he could fly." 



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